East

Father

FOR MY THIRD JOURNEY I headed due south. My previous two had been north and northwest. Soren was eager for me to explore to the south, as there were so many areas there that remained uncharted.

In the course of mapping the lands I traveled through, I spoke to many local inhabitants, asking them about towns, rivers, and lakes, and the best routes between this point and that. Always at the end of our conversations, I would throw in a casual question about white bears, saying I had heard they were occasionally seen about and had any passed through of late. I dared not ask whether anyone had seen a white bear and a young girl traveling together, for I would surely be thought mad. Even my innocent question about white bears raised eyebrows, especially the farther south I went. A white bear? This far south? their faces would seem to say.

Though I had my work to occupy me, I was still beside myself with worry about Rose. Every dead end, and every blank look at my queries, sent me deeper into despair.

But in a small town not far from the seacoast, I finally had luck.

I came across a gentleman leading two heifers along a country road. We bade each other good day, he gazing with curiosity at the pad of paper and other tools I had been using to mark the road. We conversed for a moment, as I explained that I was a mapmaker, then casually I trotted out my usual query about whether he or anyone he knew had ever seen a white bear in the vicinity.

"Only the likes of Sig Everhart has ever claimed to see bears, and that's only when he's paid one too many visits to the wine barrel," the man responded with a laugh.

"Ah yes, wine can make us all see things." I laughed with him, but my interest quickened. "And where might I find this Master Everhart?"

"Lives in town," the man replied, cocking an eyebrow at me.

"I'd be obliged if you could direct me," I said.

And the man did, saying, "Sig's a good fellow, except for his weakness for wine."

But I was already hastening along the road to town. I quickly tracked down the man in his barn, where he was halfheartedly grooming a scrawny horse. He was clearly nursing a painful hangover.

I was not in the mood for tackling the subject sideways, so I just came right out and asked, "Have you seen a white bear in the past month or so?"

He frowned, and said suspiciously, "Ah, after a bit of fun, are you, stranger? Who put you up to it? Asa? Or Jonah?"

Impatient, I told him that no one had sent me and that I just needed to know the answer to my question.

Sig Everhart looked at me, then turned aside and spat into the hay. "Saw a white bear—last full moon, I think it was. Past midnight. I had lost my way in the woods outside town. Mind you, I was drunk as a horned owl. But I saw it, I swear. And it had summat riding on its back."

My heart felt like it would pound its way out of my chest. I grabbed the man's arms with my hands. "Which way was it going? How fast did it travel? Could you see what was on its back?"

He pulled away from me, looking wary. "Probably naught more than a ... What do you call them?...Hallucination. Brought on by the drink. Haven't been that soused since. Although last night I came close..."

"Please," I said, my voice cracking. "Just tell me." The man must have sensed my desperation, for he held up a placating hand. "Sure, sure. Well, whatever it was, hallucination or not, it was moving fast. But it had slowed down, to pick its way over Rilling Creek. And it was heading south. Could see naught of what rode its back. Could have been dirt even, or leaves. Or the wine.. ." he added with a grimace, putting his hand to his temple.

That was all I could get from the hungover Sig Everhart, but it was enough to give me my first spark of hope in a long while.

In my own mind I had no doubt that what the man had seen was my Rose riding on the back of the white bear. And so I found my way to Rilling Creek and from there headed south.

But days turned to weeks, and I could find no other trace of Rose and the white bear. I combed each village, asking everyone I saw. I roamed the woods, the meadows.

Finally I came to the sea, the farthest south I could go. I had combed the coastland, east and west, asking everyone I met, knocking at the doors to hundreds of strangers' homes. And so I stood by the water's edge and stared over the waves. It had been more than two months since I had left home, and the only clue to Rose's whereabouts had been from a drunken sot. But it was a slender thread of hope and I clung to it like a drowning man.