East

Neddy

I SENSED THAT MOTHER'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.