East

Rose

IT WAS NOT A MONSTER that lay sleeping on the white sheets. Nor a faceless horror. Nor even the white bear.

It was a man.

His hair was golden, glowing bright as a bonfire in the light of the candle. And his features were fair, I suppose, but he was a stranger and that somehow was the greatest shock of all—that I had been lying all these months beside a complete stranger. I had to hold the candle steady against the violent shudder that shook my body. Then I noticed the stranger was wearing the white nightshirt, the one I had woven. It fit him well, not too wide nor too narrow across the shoulders; the sleeves falling to his wrists, neither too long nor too short. I thought how lucky I had been in estimating the size, with only the feeling of his weight on the mattress to go by, then realized how absurd I was to be standing there thinking about how well the nightshirt fit.

He lay on his side. I stared down at his hand, which curled gently on the white sheet in front of him. There was a silver ring on his smallest finger. I could see sparse golden hairs on the back of his hand, and the curved fingers seemed vulnerable to me. I suddenly felt ashamed, staring down at this sleeping stranger in a pool of candlelight. I felt myself blush, my skin hot and uncomfortable. I raised the candle, thinking to blow it out at once but hesitating briefly for a last look at his face.

And then his eyes opened.

I let out a cry, my breath going short. They were his eyes, the white bear's eyes. My body jerked with the shock of seeing familiar, even well-loved, eyes inside a stranger's face.

In that moment the candle tipped and hot wax spilled onto the stranger, onto the shoulder of the white nightshirt.

He let out a cry of his own, and the sound of it shall remain seared in my heart forever, so horrible was it to my ears. It had nothing to do with the pain of hot wax burning the skin but instead held an enormous aching grief; it was a keening of loss and death and betrayal.

"What have you done?" were the words wrung out of him. It was a stranger's voice yet held dim echoes of the white bear.

But even worse than that cry, and what pierced me even deeper, was the look in his eyes. The utter hopelessness.

"No!" I cried out, and I became aware that something was happening around me. There was an immense roaring in my ears that obliterated all sound. Shards of light and color exploded against my eyes so that I had to close them, and my feet were standing on nothing. I had a sensation of falling yet not moving at all. Flinging my arms out, I reached for the stranger with the golden hair, but my fingers touched nothing. And there was nothing, except sound and color and a terrifying spinning sensation.

Suddenly I felt cold air on my skin, and my feet were on solid ground. Opening my eyes I saw that I was no longer in my room in the castle. There was no castle. I was outside in the night, standing beside the mountain, which loomed above me in the darkness of night.

The stranger with the hopeless eyes was standing in front of me. He was tall and I had to tilt my head back to look up at him. Just behind his head was the moon, gibbous and bright, with a cloud floating past it.

"What have you done?" he said again, this time in a whisper.

"I'm sorry," I answered, my own voice breaking, the words pathetic and flimsy in my ears. I wanted to avert my eyes from his, from the pain, but I could not.

"If you had only held on one last cycle of the moon..." He trailed off, though his eyes remained on mine.

"What..." I began urgently, not wanting to know but needing to, "what would have happened then?"

"I would have been freed. After so long..." He hesitated. "I do not know anymore how long. It feels like several lifetimes..."

"You were under a spell?"

"Yes. White bear by day; boy ... then man ... by night. I could not speak of it. The only way I could be released was for a maiden to live with me, of her own free will, for one year. And during that time she was not to gaze upon my human face."

I heard a faint jingle of bells, though they registered only dimly, so lost was I in the damning words. "And now?" I asked, dreading the answer.

"I go with her. Forever."

"Who? Who do you go with?"

He shook his head, hopelessness flooding his whole body.

"Can't you tell me?"

"It does not matter. I know her only as Queen, and her land is far."

"Where is it?" I asked, willing him to tell me.

He laughed suddenly, and I could hear the full-throated, grating sound of the white bear's laughter in it. "East of the sun and west of the moon," he said.

I stared at him stupidly. "What do you mean?"

"Just as I said—east of the sun and west of the moon is where her land lies." Again he laughed, bitterly.

The bells I had heard earlier were louder now.

"She comes," the stranger said. Then he grabbed my hand and pressed something into it. "Her power is... strong," he said, his mouth twisting as though the last word did not do justice to the truth. "I would not have her harm you."

A sleigh was approaching, pulled by four magnificent white reindeer. The sleigh was a silvery white color and the reins were lined with silver bells. I caught a glimpse of a pale face, cold and beautiful, and behind it, Tuki and the woman Urda. And then before I could move, the stranger with the white bear's eyes was gone, and the sleigh with him.

I could no longer hear the bells. I was alone.