East (33 page)

I have been feeling somewhat odd of late. Not ill or unhappy. Just a little different, like my sight is clearer, or my thoughts. Or perhaps it is that I feel more awake; I certainly rise in the morning feeling more alert. I can't quite figure it out, but I am glad of it.

I have even had brief memories of the time before I came to the ice palace. Even before I became a white bear. They are fleeting but pleasant.

Just today I recalled being a child and playing on a field of the greenest grass, with many bright yellow flowers poking through the green. There were other children and we were all laughing together at something. It was very enjoyable, the memory.

I have not told my queen because she does not care for mention of the past. And I do not wish to upset her, especially when she is so busy preparing for our future happiness.

T
UKI MANAGED TO
smuggle some of the plain slank to me, which was wonderful. Despite my increased status as seamstress and weaver, I still received only the most meager of meals, presumably because most of my nutrition should have come from the doctored slank, which I continued to pour away. (The hole under my bed had grown quite large.) I was becoming painfully thin and worried the trolls would notice. They never did, though. Softskins were viewed as a herd, not worth taking note of individually. Our function was to provide service to the trolls until our bodies wore out. Then we were replaced.

It was Tuki who told me that when that happened, when softskins became too old or too ill to work, they were taken to something called
kentta murha.
When I asked what
kentta murha
was, Tuki turned very white and silent. I could not get any words of sense from him after that, and finally he left me, still upset.

I continued with my tasks. The wedding feast would be the day after next, and there were still several gowns to be completed. I barely slept at all, so hard was I being worked. I felt fortunate that Tuki had gotten me the unpowdered slank, or I might well have collapsed from the lack of sleep and food. But the slank gave me energy and strength. And I needed all my wits about me for what lay ahead.

F
INALLY THE DAY HAS ARRIVED.
I am extremely pleased to see that all my preparations are coming together, just as I had planned. The feast tonight will be the largest and grandest gathering in the history of our people. For the very first time the trolls from the bottom of the world have journeyed north to my kingdom. Even my father, in his prime, created nothing of this magnitude. It is extraordinary.

With my arts I myself made the gown I will wear. I will outshine the northern sun in radiance, which is not surprising in that I borrowed some of the sun's brilliance to create the fabric.

Simka has surpassed herself in the kitchen. And I am even pleased with Urda. Tuki has, somewhat to my surprise, been a great success as a companion to Myk. Myk has asked me to allow Tuki to attend him during the ceremony, and I have agreed. Urda is terribly pleased and has been bragging about it all over the palace. I hope the little fool does not make any stupid mistakes that will mar the splendor of the proceedings.

Last night Myk had one of his nightmares, the first in some time. I attribute it to wedding-night jitters and am not unduly concerned. He was very agitated, though, and I had to give him double the portion of the powdered slank. It was very peaceful, holding him in my arms as he settled down to sleep, his golden head resting on my shoulder. How I love him. It is why I have done all that I have done.

The guests for the feast will begin to arrive this afternoon, and the rooms have been made ready. Every room in the palace will be full. Most of the guests will be fatigued when they arrive, having traveled great distances, but there will be little rest for them tonight.

We will begin with the feast. Twenty courses of the greatest delicacies in Huldre. And then will come the dancing, which will last well into the night. And then tomorrow at midday, after Myk plays his flauto, we will be joined together ... forever.

I
WAS KEPT BUSY
until the very last minute, putting final touches on the troll ladies' gowns—letting out a seam here, adding a silk rose there. The noise was horrible, each troll lady stridently demanding something in a rasping voice. At times I felt I was attending a flock of cawing, brightly colored crows. My head ached and my fingers were numb.

And then finally I was left alone. I was instructed to clean up the mess of the sewing room and then return to my quarters. As had become usual, no one stayed to supervise me. Every available serving troll was needed in the kitchen, banquet hall, or stables. I breathed a great sigh of relief, for this was one element in my plan that I had no control over. Though it seemed likely the trolls would treat me as they had for the past several weeks, leaving me alone to clean up, still there had been no guarantee.

I had brought all I needed with me to the sewing room. And when the last troll had gone and I had given my dull-eyed acceptance to their final orders, I set to work.

First I pulled out my leather wallet from where it had been concealed under my clothing. Though I knew the gold and the silver dresses had not been adversely affected by being folded up in the wallet for so long, I was still anxious that the moon dress might have been damaged. After all, it had been through a storm at sea as well as the inhumanly freezing conditions of my trek northward. My fingers trembling slightly, I removed the dress from the wallet and shook it out.

I needn't have worried. There was not so much as a wrinkle in the exquisite fabric, and I marveled all over again at its breathtaking beauty, unbelieving as before that I had actually created such a wonder.

I set the dress aside for a moment and quickly pulled on an undergarment I had fashioned for myself in stolen moments. To protect myself from the cold (I would not be able to wear a reindeer-skin parka to the wedding feast or my duck-feather underwear), I had stitched together several layers of very fine silk into a full-length suit that fit close to my skin.

Then I put on the dress.

I crossed to a large oval mirror that the troll ladies had been using earlier to admire themselves in their gowns. It was the first time I had seen myself in a mirror since leaving the white bear's castle, and I was shocked to see my face. It was much thinner and paler, and there was a threadlike white scar on my right cheekbone, a souvenir of my brush with the bear in the ice forest. I also looked different in other ways—how I held my head, the expression in my eyes. I was not the same Rose who had left home almost two years before on the back of a white bear.

Anyway, it didn't matter how my face looked. I went to a corner of the room, and from under a pile of little-used cloths, I retrieved a small bundle. Carefully I unwrapped it, revealing a mask. I had been working on this mask secretly for the past several weeks. It was made of fabric, though I had stiffened the material somewhat with a thin paste I had made of flour and water. It had been an immense task, and I had used every bit of skill I possessed for working with cloth. But the result was an extraordinarily lifelike mask of a troll woman's face. Or rather my face, if I had had the white, ridged skin of a troll.

I put the mask on, fastening the ties under my hair, and once again gazed at myself in the mirror. It was amazing. I had been transformed into a young troll woman, if not as beautiful as the queen at least passably pretty. My mask would not have borne very close inspection under human eyes, but I was counting on the trolls' poor eyesight to keep them from seeing through my disguise.

The gown had a high neck and long, flowing sleeves that hid my soft skin. And I had made white gloves with a ridged texture to cover my hands. On my thumb, underneath one of the gloves, I wore the silver ring the white bear had given me.

The day before, Tuki had presented me with a simple diadem of pearls, with trailing strands that wove into my hair. I did not want to accept the crown for fear he would get into trouble. But he would not take it back, making a maddening game, holding his hands behind his back and chuckling happily at my frustration. So I carefully arranged the diadem on my head, the strands of pearls looking like drops of pure moonglow shimmering in my dark hair.

Shoes had been my biggest problem; my big boots would hardly go well with a moon gown, but Tuki had once again come to my aid by finding me a pair of castoff slippers. They were an old pair of the queen's, he told me, which she had given to Urda when the queen had tired of them. They were too small for Urda, but she had kept them anyway, in the back of her closet.

I slipped on the shoes, which were white and trimmed with tiny pearls. They fit. I don't know why exactly, but it was unsettling to me that the Troll Queen and I should have very nearly the same size feet.

I was ready. I had planned to time my arrival after the feast, when the dancing was to begin. I would be a latecomer, from a far-distant land, and would, hopefully, be able to slip into the throng without anyone noticing. I had practiced over and over in my head the troll words I would say if questioned. I was not sure if I would be able to capture the rough cadence of the troll voice, but the few times I had attempted it with Tuki, he had assured me that I would pass.

I think it was all a game to Tuki; he played along with all the eagerness and enthusiasm that he had shown when I'd used the story knife or we'd played the language game. I worried about him, though, and hated pulling him into my plot. Tuki was a simple soul, and guile did not come naturally to him. I prayed that I could keep Tuki from harm. I would not have been able to bear it if something were to happen to him.

I saw Tuki for just a moment that afternoon, and he whispered to me, when no one was near, that he had given Myk the unpowdered slank again the night before. It had been seven days since the white bear's last dose of slank laced with
rauha.
Tuki saw a difference in him.

I was sure that if only I could get near enough to look into his eyes ... he would remember me. He had to.

I
T IS A TRIUMPH!
The banquet hall is aglow with color and light, from the finery my people wear in my honor to the brilliance of the
revontulet,
the northern lights that stream rivers of color through the sky. Viewed through the crystalline walls and ceiling of my ice palace, it is extraordinary. A masterpiece.

Myk seems sleepy eyed, somewhat subdued. I suppose it is the effect of the double portion of powdered slank I gave him last night. But when he looks at me, he smiles.

I have never been so happy.

M
Y QUEEN IS RADIANT.
I can hardly believe it is me she wishes to wed. Tomorrow. How can I be worthy of such an honor?

Tuki is acting odd. All the time he gazes at the entrance, as though expecting someone to enter. He has hardly touched the delicious food.

I wish I did not feel so drowsy and dull witted.

A
LL OF THE OUTLYING
buildings, except the stables, were connected to the ice palace by tunnels, creating a weblike maze that caused at least one softskin a day to get hopelessly lost. There were trolls who were assigned the job of leading those wandering softskins to their proper place. Though it did not seem likely there would be trolls in the passageways on the night of the wedding feast, I did not want to take the risk. Even the most unobservant troll would think it odd to find a party guest roaming the passages leading to the servants' quarters. So I decided to circle around and approach the front entrance of the palace from the outside.

I put on my reindeer-skin parka over the dress, donned my old boots (putting the dainty pearl shoes in my pockets), and went outside.

The northern lights were extraordinary. I had never seen them so glorious, so richly hued and vivid. Though I was not particularly cold in my layers, I began to shiver. The Troll Queen's power was immense. Did I really think that I, with nothing but a flimsy mask and a ring on my thumb, had any chance of taking away that which she desired above all else?

It was a long walk, skirting the outside of the ice palace, but eventually I came to the front. I slipped stealthily around the corner and saw palace guards busily meeting and attending to the sleigh of a group of late-arriving trolls. No one noticed me as I made my way up the sweeping ice stairway. Ahead of me a pair of trolls were just entering, and I trailed behind them. They, too, wore furs, which they hung on a treelike contraption made of ice—a coatrack, I guessed. There weren't many coats on it, as most of the visitors had arrived earlier and were staying inside the ice palace. I found a spot for my coat and placed my boots under it.

I entered the banquet room. The sight before me stopped my breath. It was an enormous hall, with glistening ice walls, a cathedral ceiling, and towering windows made of clear ice. Through the windows the northern lights were visible in all their overwhelming beauty. The ice refracted the pulsing blues, greens, and purples, causing color to swirl across every surface of the room. The radiance and perfection of it was almost too much to take in.

Hundreds of trolls were gathered, all dressed elegantly in brilliantly colored finery. The air vibrated with their guttural voices. Tables lined the outside walls, having been pushed aside after the banquet was done to make space for dancing. Many trolls were sitting at the tables, but most were dancing. What they danced to was barely recognizable to me as music. It was a rumbling, pulsing sound, combined with a higher-pitched noise, possibly from an instrument like a flauto, though there was little in the way of melody. The sound hurt my ears, but in some strange way fit with the pulsing of the northern lights. Probably the queen had arranged that as well, I thought grimly.

The trolls' dancing wasn't very much like the dancing I knew from back in Njord, either. Pairing off, they held on to each other by the elbows and moved their feet in a crabbed, sideways motion.