East

Rose

MALMO APPEARED ON the morning I was to depart. I had packed my gear and was eating a bowl of thick porridge. She entered the house and came directly to me.

"If you will have me as guide, I will go with you north," she said without preamble.

I was speechless for a moment, not sure I had understood her. "You mean you would go with me, travel north with me, to find the ice bridge?"

Malmo nodded. "As shaman I have always wished to see the ice bridge. But I did not care to leave my people."

"And now?"

"Now there is an ice bear in peril, and my animal is seku nanoa, white bear."

"What do you mean 'my animal'?" I asked.

"Each shaman has her own animal. It is tornaq, the source of power." She paused. "Before you came here, I dreamed of bear. When you told me of your journey, I believed it was ooblako, a portent. In my dream last night I traveled to the ice field." She gestured in a northward direction. "And there I saw seku nanoa again. He spoke to my soul, and so I go with you.

"I cannot be long gone from my people," she went on. "Should Sedna grant us the way to the ice bridge, I will leave you there."

Dismissing Sofi's map as inaccurate (at least when it came to Grönland), Malmo brought out a long, thin carved piece of wood that showed the coastline of the northern half of Grönland. She followed the curve of the intricate carving of inlets and headlands with her finger, showing how we would travel by water along the coastline up to the Tatke Fjord. We would then paddle inland, north along the fjord a short distance. When the fjord ended we would travel northward by foot and ski.

Grateful, I thanked Malmo. I felt lucky that she would journey with me, not only for her knowledge and experience of the land but also for her companionship.

The boat we would use for the sea portion of our journey was called a kyak, a small two-person craft propelled by paddle. Our gear would be stowed under a stiff waterproof cover with two openings for Malmo and me.

Malmo and I finished loading the kyak at midday. I was just settling myself into it when she grabbed my arm and pointed to something behind me.

I turned to see Thor heading toward us from the direction of the village. He was hobbling, still leaning on his crutch. I stepped out of the boat and went to meet him. He looked slightly better than the last time I had seen him, though the stench coming from him brought tears to my eyes. I saw at once that he was sober.

"Came to say a proper good-bye," he said roughly. "I won't have it said old Thor has forgotten his manners."

I smiled.

"I wanted to give you this, for your journey," and he thrust at me the leather pouch containing his prized leidarstein.

"Oh no, I—" I protested.

"Take it," he said almost threateningly. "It's not much good in this godforsaken place where the water freezes before you can blink, but have it anyway. I've been thinking I might try one of these newfangled compasses. That is, if the old knorr is ever fit for sailing again."

"She will be. You'll see to her," I said.

He nodded absently. Then leaning toward me, he took my hand. "I hope you find the white bear. And set things right with him."

"Thank you, Thor."

"Well, it's back to the knorr for me. Have just a little bit left at the bottom of that cask," he said with a grin.

"And what will you do when it's empty?"

"Ah, I hear they have a concoction here, fermented reindeer milk or summat. Might give it a try. Or might not." He winked at me.

I stretched up on my tiptoes and gave Thor a kiss on his matted beard. "Good-bye."

Right before we were to depart, I slipped the small Queen Maraboo game piece into the pocket of my parka. I figured I was going to need all of Queen Maraboo's courage for the journey ahead, and I wanted her close at hand.

Malmo and I set off in the kyak. She set me in front and patiently taught me how to paddle. I realized, as we made our way against the waves out of the harbor and into the deep water, that this was the third vessel in which I had traveled the sea since leaving home—sealskin (carried in a white bear's mouth), knorr, and now kyak. I found the kyak the most frightening. I was so close to the frigid water, with only the stiffened hide of a reindeer between me and it, and the paddling was awkward and tiring. But gradually I grew used to the sensation and the rhythm of the paddling, and I came to love traveling by kyak. I felt part of the sea, moving through the water, using its power and motion to propel our craft.

We traveled north, along the coastline, and the farther north we went, the more ice there was in the water, sometimes big chunks of it. It took all our concentration to maneuver around the ice; one stretch was particularly deadly, and we had to paddle our way through it, twisting and swerving until I thought my arms would fall off from the exertion. Not long after, we encountered a large iceberg that looked like a ghostly white castle as we glided past, its top a battlement of jagged spires. Malmo told me that in the far north the sea was impassable for ships because of the ice.

For nine days we paddled north. Malmo knew the places to land for rest and food. If there was no shelter to be found, such as an ice cave, we used a small tent of animal skin that Malmo had brought along.

On the tenth day we came to Tatke Fjord. The massive ice-scabbed cliffs were a breath-stopping sight, immense and overwhelming. They made the Romsdal Fjord near my home, which I had found awe inspiring as a child, look like a creek with knee-high riverbanks.

That was where we would leave the sea, turning the nose of the kyak into Tatke Fjord. As we followed the curve of the river, which was also choked with ice, I felt the weight of the snow-white spires towering above on either side of us. Without speaking we paddled the kyak through the water. I have never known a silence as complete as it was in that fjord.

After almost a day and a half of travel, ice made it impossible to go any farther into Tatke Fjord. We pulled the kyak up onto land and took out all our gear. Anchoring the small boat in the snow, Malmo said, "I will come back for it on my return journey."

And so we set off on foot, carrying our gear in packs on our backs, the skis lashed to them. At first I felt unbalanced and top heavy, as if the smallest puff of wind would knock me over. But as I walked I grew used to the load and gradually felt steadier.

Slowly we ascended to the top of an ice cliff, following a trail that hugged the side. It was a hard climb, the pack heavier than a dead sheep on my back, and my breath came out in great puffs of silver smoke as I trudged upward. In all that whiteness I never would have seen a path, but Malmo followed it unerringly. When we reached the top, we donned our skis.

The farther north we went, the colder it got. Before then I had thought I knew about cold. But the winters in Njord were springlike compared to the bitter, lancing cold of that frozen land. It was like a predatory, hovering beast, bent on sucking every bit of heat and life out of a body.

I am certain that had I not had Malmo as guide and companion, I would have died.

"It is a good thing you are shaped the way you are, you know," Malmo said. "Good for the cold."

According to Malmo my short, sturdy body was Inuit-like, well designed for enduring very cold temperatures, its compactness conserving heat. Even my dark eyes, though not as dark as an Inuit's, gave more protection from the glare on the snow than lighter eyes. It seemed ironic to me that if I had had the willowy form and sky blue eyes of my sisters, features I had always deeply envied, I may well have been doomed in the unforgiving land.

The surface stayed relatively smooth and we made good progress on skis. We spoke little, concentrating all our energies on moving forward. The ivory goggles I wore were continually iced up, but I grew used to that, as well as to looking out at the world through the row of miniature icicles that had formed on my eyelashes. I tried rubbing them away but found that in doing so I had broken off some lashes. Having once been told that my eyelashes were one of my best features, I stopped trying to get rid of the icicles, though I laughed at myself for such vanity. I would be lucky to survive at all, much less with my eyelashes intact.

One morning when we emerged from our tent, we found the land covered in a dense white mist. As we set out, Malmo warned me that things were not always as they appeared in a snow fog.

It was a completely white world, with no edges or contrast by which to measure things. At one point I saw a huge iceberg looming toward us and I cried out to Malmo, who looked as if she was about to ski right into it. It turned out to be a small hillock of snow that Malmo guessed to be several leagues ahead.

That night, as we huddled in our tent, Malmo told me stories of hunters in a snow fog stalking what they took to be a huge animal and finding it to be merely a small white hare. "And once," she said, "there was a hunter, one of my people, who came upon a small white bear cub. He reached out his hand to touch its fur and discovered that it was a full-grown white bear, ready to attack."

I gaped at her, unbelieving.

"It is true," she responded serenely.

The snow fog stayed with us for several days. And then, on its heels, came the blizzard.