East

Rose

ONCE WE WERE OUT of Niflheim, I thought everything would be all right. But I was wrong.

There was no Malmo to guide us. And spring had come. Which didn't mean green grass and flowers and birdcall, as it did in Njord. It meant meltwater and thin ice and the surface under our sleighs breaking apart.

That didn't happen right away, though, and I was able to lead us back to the frozen sea Malmo and I had crossed. At the edge of the sea was the ice forest in all its deadly beauty, the ice forest where I had faced the other white bear. The cracks in the surface of the ice I had seen before were larger and wider, and the groaning, creaking sounds were louder and more frequent. The sleighs were too heavy and we had to abandon them. The reindeer were eager to go their own way when we set them loose but three, including Vaettur, stayed with us.

As we made our way on foot through the maze of ice towers, fissures would narrow and widen unexpectedly, inches from our feet. It became a nightmarish dance as we darted and swerved and leaped to avoid the freezing water below. No one fell in, but by the time we got through the ice forest, we were all exhausted and wrung out. We encountered no white bears.

Crossing the flat expanse of frozen sea, I tried to remember what Malmo had taught me about melting—that you should pay attention to the puddles on the surface of the ice. Light blue water meant the underlying ice was thick enough to walk on; dark blue meant it was too thin. There were many dark blue pools of water.

But the man who had been a white bear knew how to live in a frozen world, in all its seasons, and he helped us to survive. He showed us how to walk like a white bear—legs spread out wide, sliding our feet quickly, never stopping.

When we reached the other side of the sea, we again came upon ice that was breaking apart. But the white bear led us across the ice floes and we made it safely to shore.

We had been traveling on land for a few days when an ice fog settled around us. At first it was beautiful. The sun was shining, and the sunlight reflected by the ice crystals created a shimmering golden curtain that enfolded us in its brilliance. It reminded me of the golden dress I had made in the castle in the mountain. But then the sun disappeared under clouds, and the golden curtain faded into a dense white fog. We could not see an inch in front of our faces.

We huddled together, thinking to wait it out, but the time stretched on and some grew restless. So we set out, moving slowly, feeling our way forward. This went on for what seemed days, until I thought I would go mad.

The fog finally lifted, but the sky was still overcast. I had no idea what direction we were heading. One of the women we had taken out of Niflheim slipped and fell, and she did not get up. We did all we could for her, but by the next morning she was dead. We slid her corpse into an ice crevasse and watched silently as it disappeared from sight. Then we resumed our journey, though there was still no sun to guide us. I began to picture us wandering endlessly through a frozen landscape, dying off one by one. The white bear came up beside me.

"We are lost," he said matter-of-factly.

"Yes," I replied.

"I wish I still had the senses of a white bear," he said. "Then I could lead us."

I nodded dully. Suddenly I remembered Thor's leidarstein. I fumbled in my pack and found the dull gray stone. Scooping up some meltwater in a cup, I rubbed one end of a needle with the leidarstein and floated it in the water. Lazily the needle swung back and forth, finally stopping.

"South," I said, pointing. The white bear nodded, relief in his eyes.

We had been heading due west, so we changed course. Knowing the direction helped, but I had no idea how far off course we had gotten. The slank was long gone and we were all starved and exhausted. There were several among us who were near death, and I didn't know how much longer any of us could keep going.

But we kept struggling on, and then one afternoon, as we crested an icy peak, I looked down and there was the impossible, unforgettable sight of Tatke Fjord. And anchored at the end of it was a ship.