East

Neddy

THE LETTER FROM ROSE arrived just after the fall harvest.

Dear Neddy,

I am writing to tell you that I am safe and well and no longer living at the castle with the white bear. It is a long story and one I hope to tell you at the end of my journey. But I made a wrong choice, one that hurt someone very badly, so I must now undertake a journey to afar distant land—one that lies east of the sun and west of the moon.

Because you are cleverer than me, you will have already figured out that there is no such land. Nevertheless, I go there. It seems right somehow that I should journey to a place that does not exists it is where Mother always feared I would end up.

And please tell Mother the candle worked all too well. But tell her, too, that the choice to use it was mine and I do not blame her.

Just as the blame is mine, the journey, too, is mine, and I must undertake it alone. So do not try to come to me. I need to set right the wrong I have done, and when I have I will return home. Trust me, Neddy, and try not to worry.

Tell Father I love him. And tell Mother and Sonja and Willem and Sara that I miss them and hope that we will all be reunited before too long.

My love to you, Neddy.

Your sister, Rose