East (21 page)

Rose.

Must remember.

The beautiful pale queen drives the sleigh. She looks back at me frequently. We rise high, moving quickly through the sky, but I see glimpses of the lands I once roamed as a white bear. Rolling hills laced with white. A boundless gray sea. And then jagged peaks crowned in glaring ice.

I am wrapped in fur. But it is not
my
fur. My limbs feel strange, thin and wavery and weak. My face is bare, strangely bare, I can't get used to it, and the cold wind rips at my naked skin. I dip my head under the furs, but the heavy warmth makes me feel sleepy and muddled. I raise my head up again, trying to remember. I want to remember.

Rose.

Tears come and they freeze on my face.

P
EERING DOWN AT ME
, a young face framed by dark braids. Her eyes widened. "
Maman, Maman!
" she called out.

I could smell food cooking. I was inside a home of some kind.

A woman's voice answered the child, but I could not make out the words she said. Another face loomed beside the face with braids. It was a kind-looking woman, with auburn hair and a broad, friendly mouth.

"
Comment allez-vous?
" she said.

She was speaking Fransk, I suddenly realized. It had been long since I had heard it spoken. When I read to the white bear from the Fransk books in the castle, I had always translated the words to Njorden. I closed my eyes at the memory but opened them again when I started coughing.

"
Estelle"!
heard the kind lady say, followed by more words. The girl with the braids disappeared.

My chest ached, but I could not stop coughing. The woman put a cool cloth on my head, and then the girl handed her a cup that the woman put to my lips. Between coughs I managed to drink something warm and fragrant. Some kind of tea, I thought, with honey in it. My coughing finally subsided and I slept.

When I awoke again the light was dim. I could hear the woman's voice, singing softly. I turned my head and saw her sitting by the hearth, sewing. I was lying on a mattress stuffed with straw, with a warm woolen blanket pulled over me.

The woman noticed that I was awake and, setting aside her mending, came to my side.

"
Comment alle^vous?
" she said again.

I thought she was asking how I was feeling but was unsure.

The woman must have seen the dim light of recognition in my eyes, for she nodded encouragingly and repeated the question.    '

"...
regretter
..." I stammered, "but I do not...
parler
Fransk." My accent was probably unrecognizable, for she looked puzzled for a moment but then understood, I think.

"Njorden," I said.

Again she nodded. "
Oui, Njord
" The girl with the braids appeared beside her mother.

"
Maman?
"

"
Estelle, elle est Njorden
,"the mother said to the girl, gesturing to me.

I started to cough again. The mother bustled into the kitchen, bringing a cup that she filled from the kettle resting on the hearth fire. Again I drank some of the sweet honeyed tea.

"Thank you," I said. "
Merci.
"

After several days of tea, and soup, and the kind attentions of the woman, whose name was Sofi, along with her daughter, Estelle, I regained some semblance of strength. At least I was able to sit up on the third day. I was still plagued by coughing, but each bout got a little shorter.

My knowledge of Fransk from childhood and the time I had spent in the castle teaching myself made it possible for me to communicate with Sofi and Estelle, if they spoke slowly. I learned that mother and daughter lived by themselves in the fairly remote part of Fransk, Sofi's husband having died several years before. Sofi had thought about moving to a coastal village where her brother lived, but she loved the countryside too well, as did Estelle.

I was vague about my own circumstances. I did not want the nice woman to think I was a lunatic by speaking of castles in mountains and enchanted bears. Instead I said I had become lost while traveling to visit relatives. I don't know what she made of me, with my tattered

nightdress and small knapsack, but she did not press me with questions.

The girl Estelle was very friendly. She loved to listen to the way I mangled Fransk words and would laugh delightedly before correcting me. On the fourth day Estelle suddenly asked if I came from the forest "
hanté par les fantômes.
" I asked her what that meant. Estelle rose to her feet and put her arms above her head, scrunching her face into a grotesque mask. She stalked about the room, moaning and crying. I stared at her in complete bewilderment. Sofi joined us, laughing.

She tried to explain, saying that Estelle was acting the part of a
fantôme.

I was still baffled. I asked if
fantôme
meant "monster," or "troll."

Sofi shook her head. I realized Estelle thought I had come from a haunted forest, and I asked them to tell me more. Sofi described a very dense wood several days' distance from their cottage. The forest had the reputation of being haunted, she said, because of the unexplained disappearances over the years of several people who had last been seen near there. It was in a very remote part of the country and not many lived in close proximity, but the few who did gave the forest a wide berth.

I honestly don't know what got into me at that moment, but I blurted out that yes, I had come through the forest "
hanté,
" and that I had come there after having lived for nearly a year with an enchanted white bear in a castle in the mountain beyond the forest.

The two of them stared at me without speaking. Uneasily I wondered if Sofi was regretting having taken in a madwoman and was trying to figure out how soon she could send me packing.

Then Estelle burst out, "
Maman, c'est l'ours blanc!
"

"
Oui, oui,"
Sofi responded distractedly. Sofi then told me that Estelle had come to her a handful of times over the past two or three years, claiming to have seen a white bear loping through a nearby meadow. Sofi had not believed her, thinking Estelle was making it up.

"It is true," I said earnestly. Sofi shook her head in amazement, and I spent the next hour or so telling her what had happened in the castle and of my plan to go in search of the land that lay east of the sun and west of the moon.

"
Fantastique,
" Sofi finally said in a soft voice, but then she added firmly that before I could even think of embarking on any kind of journey, I must first regain my strength and get rid of my cough. And though I was impatient to resume my travels, I knew she was right.

There was a fine, sturdy loom in a corner of the room, with the beginnings of some woven cloth at the bottom, and the next day, because I had no money to repay Sofi for her kindness, I offered to help with their weaving. Sofi said I did not need to repay her at all, but I insisted. So I made my way over to the loom, sat on the small stool, and began to weave.

It felt good to be at a loom again, though at first it brought up memories of the castle. But the loom was much more like the one at home, and so I thought of Neddy and Snurri, and as usual I got lost in the work. When I came to myself I discovered that I had completed a very long length of cloth. Both Sofi and Estelle were beside me, looking at me as if I were a troll with seven heads.

"
Magnifique!
" Sofi cried. Holding the cloth bunched in her hands, she asked where I had learned to weave. And Estelle piped in that my hands moved so fast, she could barely see them.

I was embarrassed, saying my skill wasn't really anything; it was just that I had begun young. Sofi again shook her head in amazement.

That afternoon Sofi went off to collect kindling and fetch water from the well. She declined my offer to help, saying she'd rather I stay behind and help Estelle prepare the evening meal. We were done quickly, a meat-and-vegetable stew we left simmering in the pot on the hearth fire, and Estelle suggested we play her favorite game. She brought out a wooden board with squares painted on it and a small box of playing pieces. It looked something like
hneftafl
, a game I had played back home, although there were more pieces for Estelle's game. The little figures were skillfully carved out of wood, with small pieces of amber for the eyes.

Estelle enthusiastically described the rules of the game, which she called
echecs.
Having done this, however, she quickly lost interest in the actual game and began making up rules of her own and stories about the small figures.

"Father carved the pieces," she said in Fransk, "and I have given each one a name."

She held up one intricate piece, saying, "
C'est la grande dame, Queen Maraboo!
"

According to Estelle, Queen Maraboo was a very brave young woman who met with many heart-stopping adventures, including vanquishing an impressive array of hideous creatures, among them a troll-witch with twelve heads, a slithery creature called Boneless that stole your bones because he didn't have any, and a ghost-wolf that breathed fire and could only be controlled by singing. My knowledge of Fransk was sorely tested by the tales, but I managed to follow along fairly well and my vocabulary grew.

Estelle played the part of Queen Maraboo, while I was assigned roles that corresponded to the other pieces of the board, either those who served Queen Maraboo or those who were her inept enemies. But when I was assigned the role of the ghost-wolf and my howl fell short of her expectations, Estelle decided that she was tired of playing
echecs.

She then began to teach me a clapping game. It was similar to games I had played with my sisters, when they could get me to sit still long enough, but the rhyming song was unfamiliar and difficult for me. This is how it went:

"
The old woman must stand at the tub
,
tub, tub,
The dirty clothes to rub, rub, rub;
But when they are clean, and fit to be seen,
She'll dress like a lady and dance on the green.
"

Estelle recited the words as we alternated slapping together our right hands and then left hands, clapping in between. I found my thoughts drifting to my makeshift washing room at the castle, and to all the times I had carefully washed that white nightshirt. I blinked back tears and lost the beat of the clapping.

Estelle scolded me.

"Teach me another," I said, swallowing hard.

Estelle happily launched into another rhyme, with another whole set of handclaps and rhythms. Then we did another, and another. At one point Estelle asked me about the silver ring I wore on my thumb. I said that the man who had been a white bear had given it to me before he disappeared. And I took it off my thumb and showed her the word
VALOIS
inscribed on it. Estelle did not know what it meant (nor did her mother when I asked her later). Putting the ring back on my thumb, I returned to the hand-clapping game with Estelle.

The last rhyme Estelle taught me went like this:

"
The sun shines east, the moon shines west,
and pigs turn somersaults in a bobolink's nest.
The sheep jumps the sun, the cat chases the moon,
and they eat strawberry jam from a gold-plated spoon.
"

She repeated it over and over, and it seemed as if she could go on forever, but finally on the tenth chorus of the cat chasing the moon, Sofi returned and it was time for supper.

When I lay on my straw-filled mattress that night, Estelle's rhymes echoed in my ears. Sheep jumping over the sun and cats chasing the moon
...I might as well chase the moon myself,
I thought,
as find my way to a land that lies east of the sun and west of the moon.

And then it struck me, like a great, ringing kick to the head. And I sat up.

"
East of the sun and west of the moon
" meant nothing. It was nonsense, like one of Estelle's rhymes. Neddy would have called it a
conundrum,
his fancy word for riddle. But it was a riddle with no solution. When the stranger with the white bear's eyes told me he was going to the place that lay "east of the sun and west of the moon," he was telling me he was going nowhere, to a place I could not follow him to. Why he chose those words, I did not know. Perhaps it was all he had been allowed to say. Or perhaps it was all he had been told.

Well, it didn't matter. Whether or not the words were a fraud, he was
somewhere.
And I would find him. I decided I must leave the next day.

"It is too soon," Sofi protested. "You need more time to get better."

"I have to go," I said.

"Then Estelle and I will go with you," Sofi replied, her tone as definite as mine had been.

I stared at her. "I don't even know where I am going."

"I will start you on your journey then. Surely you know which direction you will begin with?"

"North," I replied. "The sleigh was going north. And the man Tuki spoke of a land of snow and ice. I think the pale queen took him to her home in that land."

Sofi nodded, then said, "I have something that might help you." She left the room.

She returned bearing a rolled-up sheet of parchment. I guessed immediately what it was. A map. It had been her husband's, brought back from a sea voyage. He had been a sailor; it was at sea that he had died.

It was a good map, made by a Portuguese mapmaker. "It is yours now," Sofi said with a smile.

"Oh no, I cannot take it."

"Yes," she replied, and would not let me refuse.

She unrolled the map, flattening it on the table in the kitchen, and pointed to a spot in the southwest of Fransk. "This is where we are," she said.

I found Njord on the map and couldn't believe my eyes. The distance the white bear had traveled was fantastic. In seven days he had journeyed through most of Fransk, at least half of Njord, the countries of Tyskland, Holland, and Danemark, as well as the sea that lay between Njord and Danemark. Such a journey, on foot, would take me a year or more, and that did not take into account getting across the waters of Njordsjoen.