East (20 page)

The stranger with the hopeless eyes was standing in front of me. He was tall and I had to tilt my head back to look up at him. Just behind his head was the moon, gibbous and bright, with a cloud floating past it.

"What have you done?" he said again, this time in a whisper.

"I'm sorry," I answered, my own voice breaking, the words pathetic and flimsy in my ears. I wanted to avert my eyes from his, from the pain, but I could not.

"If you had only held on one last cycle of the moon..." He trailed off, though his eyes remained on mine.

"What..." I began urgently, not wanting to know but needing to, "what would have happened then?"

"I would have been freed. After so long..." He hesitated. "I do not know anymore how long. It feels like several lifetimes..."

"You were under a spell?"

"Yes. White bear by day; boy ... then man ... by night. I could not speak of it. The only way I could be released was for a maiden to live with me, of her own free will, for one year. And during that time she was not to gaze upon my human face."

I heard a faint jingle of bells, though they registered only dimly, so lost was I in the damning words. "And now?" I asked, dreading the answer.

"I go with her. Forever."

"Who? Who do you go with?"

He shook his head, hopelessness flooding his whole body.

"Can't you tell me?"

"It does not matter. I know her only as Queen, and her land is far."

"Where is it?" I asked, willing him to tell me.

He laughed suddenly, and I could hear the full-throated, grating sound of the white bear's laughter in it. "East of the sun and west of the moon," he said.

I stared at him stupidly. "What do you mean?"

"Just as I said—east of the sun and west of the moon is where her land lies." Again he laughed, bitterly.

The bells I had heard earlier were louder now.

"She comes," the stranger said. Then he grabbed my hand and pressed something into it. "Her power is... strong," he said, his mouth twisting as though the last word did not do justice to the truth. "I would not have her harm you."

A sleigh was approaching, pulled by four magnificent white reindeer. The sleigh was a silvery white color and the reins were lined with silver bells. I caught a glimpse of a pale face, cold and beautiful, and behind it, Tuki and the woman Urda. And then before I could move, the stranger with the white bear's eyes was gone, and the sleigh with him.

I could no longer hear the bells. I was alone.

I
COULD HAVE HAD
a servant drive the sleigh. But I have always loved the reins in my own hands. The reindeer are superb, the best of the herd. The snow took great care and effort to bring, but I am pleased with my handiwork. It is the finest way to begin the journey to his new home.

I made sure that Urda and Tuki wrapped him well in furs and gave him frequent draughts of slank. The cold will be an adjustment for him, but soon enough he will grow used to it.

His lovely face is pale and pinched with unhappiness, but it does not disturb me, for in time that will fade. There is
rauha
in the slank and this will help ease his pain, and blur his memories as well.

She was a flawed, unfinished child, unworthy of him.

I flick the whip ever so slightly, and the reindeer soar across the sky. My arts keep the softskins below from seeing us.

I look back at him, bundled in his furs. His eyes are closed, the lashes dark against his white cheeks; perhaps he sleeps. The breath-stopping joy fills me until I feel I shall burst apart.

W
HAT HAVE
I
DONE?
I thought, and sank to my knees, weeping.

It was the cold that brought me out of my grief. I discovered with a shock that I was lying in my nightdress in several inches of snow.

The cold had seeped into my whole body, and I began trembling violently. Then I remembered the stranger pressing something into my hand and I uncurled my frozen fingers to find his silver ring. I could see it only faintly by the moonlight. The ring was plain—a polished, gleaming silver—but there was a word etched inside of the band:
VALOIS. Fransk,
I thought, but I didn't know what the word meant. Another sob rose in my throat, but I swallowed it. Slipping the ring onto my thumb (the only finger it fit), I told myself I must do something, beginning with getting out of the cold.

I stood, gazing around me. The mountain before me was covered in snow, and there was no sign on its surface of a door or entrance to the castle. I wondered if the castle was even still there, or if my actions had caused it to disappear altogether, along with the white bear. But there was no white bear anymore. A stranger had stood in his place. A stranger whose life I had destroyed with one reckless choice.

Shivering violently I suddenly noticed that my pack from home was sitting nearby in the snow. I ran to it, and inside I found all the things I had originally brought with me from home. There were also a few items I had added since, including the dictionary of words from Tuki's language I had made. My leather wallet was there, too, and despite my frozen hands, I couldn't help opening it. Glimmers of gold, silver, and pearly moon shone out at me. Breathing hard I shut it again. This then was all that was left of the castle in the mountain.

I dug deeper, found the wool vest made by Widow Hautzig, which I pulled over my nightdress, and then some wool socks, dragging them hurriedly onto my frozen feet, followed by my old boots. Finally I wrapped myself in a woolen sweater from home and then my mended compass-cloak.

It was as I was fastening my cloak that I saw the candle and flint lying in the snow. My cheeks flamed and I crossed to where they lay. I was tempted to grab them up and hurl them away from me as far as I could. But instead I deliberately picked them up, dusted off the snow, and thrust them into my bag.

I was shivering so hard I could barely breathe. If I didn't find shelter soon, I would lose my wits. I began to move around the base of the mountain and after a short time found a small, low cave. I wedged myself into it, wrapping my cloak tightly around me. Searching the back of the cave, I found a handful of dry kindling, and though I loathed the sight of it, I used the flint my mother had given me and managed to get a small blaze going.

As I sat there before the tiny fire, my shivering subsided somewhat. My thoughts had been as jangled and shivery as my body, but they, too, quieted.

What did it mean? "
East of the sun and west of the moon.
" Was it a clue, directions of some kind to the faraway land where the pale woman he called Queen was taking him?

But how could that be? Neither the sun, nor even less the moon, provided any sort of fixed point from which to take that kind of bearing. They were always moving across the sky. What was east of the moon at midnight would be entirely another direction by dawn. It made no sense.

Maybe if I could figure out the positions of the sun and moon at the very moment when he had spoken those words, then I could at least chart the right direction.

I remembered looking up at him, the moon almost directly above his head. My back had been to the mountain then. So I had a good idea of the moon's position at least.

But what of the sun? Could I make any sort of calculation as to its position? I didn't know how soon it was until sunrise. And even if I did know that the sun was an hour or two below the horizon, what did that gain me? How could there be a reachable destination lying east of the sun and west of the moon when the two directions were opposite? My father had taught me that the earth was a round ball, and so, I reasoned, there would be a point, on the far side of the globe, where the two directions would meet....My head began to ache.

"
East of the sun and west of the moon
" As unfathomable as the words were, I realized I must figure them out, reason it through. For I would go to this impossible land that lay east of the sun and west of the moon. From the moment the sleigh had vanished from sight and I could no longer hear the silver bells, I knew that I would go after the stranger that had been the white bear to make right the terrible wrong I had done him.

It didn't occur to me to do anything else.

I could just as easily have looked around and thought,
At last, I am free to return to my home and family!
I could have put it all behind me and briskly turned my steps toward home. But I did not. Instead I was busily mapping out a journey to an unreachable place.

In the meager light of the small fire, I gathered my things together. When weaving a cloth, you must always know where you are in the design. So it was with me. Before I could begin to chart my course, I had to first find out where I was.

All that mattered was to make things right. And I would do whatever it took, journey to wherever I must, to reach that goal.

She would search for him. In the land that lay east of the sun and west of the moon.

But there was no way there.

T
HOSE FIRST FEW DAYS
were as grim as any I can remember. I had no idea where I was, much less where I was going, and I could not stop thinking about the candle wax dripping onto his skin, the cry of despair, and the sleigh disappearing from my sight. I rewove the scene over and over in my head until I thought I would lose my reason.

I had caught a chill, no doubt from lying weeping in the snow, and was plagued by a nasty cough and a nose that wouldn't stop leaking.

I walked for three straight days without finding any sign of a town or farm. I chose my direction by instinct, thinking that I would follow in the general direction the sleigh had been heading—north. I still wore my nightdress under the vest, sweater, and cloak. But the weather was gradually warming, and most of the snow had melted by twilight of the third day.

The fourth day I came across a large farm. My spirits rose. I was hoping desperately for some kind of assistance—food, directions, anything. I had eaten nothing aside from what remained of Torsk's honey and the toffee Mother had given me many months before. But the closer I came to the first building, a pale blue barn of medium size, the clearer it became that the farm was abandoned. There was no sign of a living creature, human or animal. However, it did not look as though it had lain deserted long, for all the buildings were well maintained, and as I searched the grounds, I even found feed in the troughs, and heaps of dung that didn't look much older than several days. Suddenly it occurred to me that the farm may have supplied the raw material for all the fine food I had eaten at the castle, and I wondered if those who ran the farm had disappeared, as well as the animals, along with the man who had been a white bear.

Anything that I could have eaten had vanished as well, and I found only some dried-up carrots and beans at the bottom of a few pails in one of the barns. I stuffed those in my pocket and resumed my journey. There was a dense forest surrounding the farm and the traveling was difficult. It took at least a day and a half to get through the forest.

Finally I stumbled out of the tangle of the trees, onto a stretch of meadowland. I was weak, my stomach tight with hunger, and my cough had worsened. But much worse than either my hunger or the cough that tormented me was the sound that kept ringing in my ears, the cry of despair from the man who had been a white bear. I heard it as I walked through dull-green grass and knee-high shrubs. I heard it when I dozed fitfully at night. I heard it when I awoke to a pale wintry sun. But I continued to struggle forward, telling myself that somehow I would make things right again.

Though I did not see any specific places I recognized, the gently rolling hills and the shapes of the trees were familiar to me from my journeys with the white bear. I knew it was winter, but clearly the winters in this land were much milder than in Njord, and some of the time it was warm enough for me to take off my cloak.

On the seventh day it began to rain. That night I made myself a bed of leaves in a small grove of some kind of broad-leaved tree I did not recognize. After eating the last of the shriveled carrots, I slept restlessly and awoke feeling feverish. When I got unsteadily to my feet, I was wracked by a cough that doubled me over. I sank to my knees, feeling lightheaded and dizzy. All I had eaten for the past seven days were toffees and the few shriveled carrots and beans. I thought ruefully of the last meal I had had in the castle. Melting-soft bread and creamy butter and herb-crusted meat with tender chunks of vegetables...

I groaned.

I was able to travel only a short distance that day, too weak to stay upright for long. That night I huddled under some bushes, feeling damp and chilled, though my face felt hot with fever. When I awoke I could barely move. Every time I lifted my head, the world around me spun crazily, and deep, hacking coughs felt like they would split my chest apart. I forced myself to my hands and knees and crawled forward but was stopped by another spasm of coughing.

I lifted my blurred eyes to look at the sky.
I'm not going to make it,
I thought.
But I have to.
Then I saw something that made me blink. A thin curve of wood-smoke against the gray sky.

I staggered to my feet and took several steps forward. But then I tripped over a low-lying shrub and fell to the ground. I began coughing and could not stop. Finally it subsided and I lay there, wrung out, my eyes closed.

I thought I might just go to sleep for a while, and then the cry of despair from the man who had been a white bear rang again in my ears. "I have to get up," I croaked. I struggled to raise myself, but a mist of gray veiled my eyes and I sank back to the ground, resigned. So weary. I heard footsteps in the grass, but it did not matter. "I'm sorry," I murmured, then slipped into unconsciousness.

I
CANNOT THINK CLEARLY.
I am human again, but I am lost. There is something in the drink they give me, and I want to refuse it, but I am cold, chilled through to my soul, and the drink warms me. I cannot remember. Except, just barely ... her. Her face, all white and pinched and filled with despair, and guilt. Her name...