East

Rose

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.