East

Rose

WHAT HAVE I DONE? I thought, and sank to my knees, weeping.

It was the cold that brought me out of my grief. I discovered with a shock that I was lying in my nightdress in several inches of snow.

The cold had seeped into my whole body, and I began trembling violently. Then I remembered the stranger pressing something into my hand and I uncurled my frozen fingers to find his silver ring. I could see it only faintly by the moonlight. The ring was plain—a polished, gleaming silver—but there was a word etched inside of the band: VALOIS. Fransk, I thought, but I didn't know what the word meant. Another sob rose in my throat, but I swallowed it. Slipping the ring onto my thumb (the only finger it fit), I told myself I must do something, beginning with getting out of the cold.

I stood, gazing around me. The mountain before me was covered in snow, and there was no sign on its surface of a door or entrance to the castle. I wondered if the castle was even still there, or if my actions had caused it to disappear altogether, along with the white bear. But there was no white bear anymore. A stranger had stood in his place. A stranger whose life I had destroyed with one reckless choice.

Shivering violently I suddenly noticed that my pack from home was sitting nearby in the snow. I ran to it, and inside I found all the things I had originally brought with me from home. There were also a few items I had added since, including the dictionary of words from Tuki's language I had made. My leather wallet was there, too, and despite my frozen hands, I couldn't help opening it. Glimmers of gold, silver, and pearly moon shone out at me. Breathing hard I shut it again. This then was all that was left of the castle in the mountain.

I dug deeper, found the wool vest made by Widow Hautzig, which I pulled over my nightdress, and then some wool socks, dragging them hurriedly onto my frozen feet, followed by my old boots. Finally I wrapped myself in a woolen sweater from home and then my mended compass-cloak.

It was as I was fastening my cloak that I saw the candle and flint lying in the snow. My cheeks flamed and I crossed to where they lay. I was tempted to grab them up and hurl them away from me as far as I could. But instead I deliberately picked them up, dusted off the snow, and thrust them into my bag.

I was shivering so hard I could barely breathe. If I didn't find shelter soon, I would lose my wits. I began to move around the base of the mountain and after a short time found a small, low cave. I wedged myself into it, wrapping my cloak tightly around me. Searching the back of the cave, I found a handful of dry kindling, and though I loathed the sight of it, I used the flint my mother had given me and managed to get a small blaze going.

As I sat there before the tiny fire, my shivering subsided somewhat. My thoughts had been as jangled and shivery as my body, but they, too, quieted.

What did it mean? "East of the sun and west of the moon." Was it a clue, directions of some kind to the faraway land where the pale woman he called Queen was taking him?

But how could that be? Neither the sun, nor even less the moon, provided any sort of fixed point from which to take that kind of bearing. They were always moving across the sky. What was east of the moon at midnight would be entirely another direction by dawn. It made no sense.

Maybe if I could figure out the positions of the sun and moon at the very moment when he had spoken those words, then I could at least chart the right direction.

I remembered looking up at him, the moon almost directly above his head. My back had been to the mountain then. So I had a good idea of the moon's position at least.

But what of the sun? Could I make any sort of calculation as to its position? I didn't know how soon it was until sunrise. And even if I did know that the sun was an hour or two below the horizon, what did that gain me? How could there be a reachable destination lying east of the sun and west of the moon when the two directions were opposite? My father had taught me that the earth was a round ball, and so, I reasoned, there would be a point, on the far side of the globe, where the two directions would meet....My head began to ache.

"East of the sun and west of the moon" As unfathomable as the words were, I realized I must figure them out, reason it through. For I would go to this impossible land that lay east of the sun and west of the moon. From the moment the sleigh had vanished from sight and I could no longer hear the silver bells, I knew that I would go after the stranger that had been the white bear to make right the terrible wrong I had done him.

It didn't occur to me to do anything else.

I could just as easily have looked around and thought, At last, I am free to return to my home and family! I could have put it all behind me and briskly turned my steps toward home. But I did not. Instead I was busily mapping out a journey to an unreachable place.

In the meager light of the small fire, I gathered my things together. When weaving a cloth, you must always know where you are in the design. So it was with me. Before I could begin to chart my course, I had to first find out where I was.

All that mattered was to make things right. And I would do whatever it took, journey to wherever I must, to reach that goal.