East

Rose

EVERYTHING WENT VERY still as I lay there, staring up at the animal. I thought of Neddy. I thought of my white bear.

Then I heard Malmo's voice. She was singing, and I sensed rather than saw her step around my prone body until she was behind me, facing the bear.

Distracted, the white bear looked up, and Malmo's eyes caught his and held them. Still murmuring her song, she began moving sideways, away from me. The bear dropped to all fours and, eyes fixed on Malmo, followed her.

I watched them, too dazed to move. When they were a stone's throw from me, Malmo stopped and the pair stood quite still, facing each other, continuing to look into each other's eyes. If their mouths had been moving, I would have thought them to be conversing.

Finally Malmo gave a nod and the white bear turned and padded away, going in the direction from which we had just come.

Malmo crossed to me then and knelt beside me. She reached into her pack and pulled out something that she pressed against the pain in the side of my face.

I looked again at the splash of red, so vivid on the ice. I saw that the blood was already starting to freeze.

"There may be a small scar. Hold this," she said calmly, indicating the cloth. She drew an ivory box from her pack and, taking off her mittens, dipped a finger in the cream inside. She rubbed the cream across the wound. It hurt, but then a warmth spread and the pain eased somewhat. "Can you travel?" asked Malmo.

"Yes," I said, sitting up, though a wave of dizziness passed through me.

Malmo sat beside me. "Let us wait a few moments," she said.

"How..." I began. "I mean, what did you do?"

"The white bear was hungry," Malmo said. "I told him about the seal's breathing hole we found. Perhaps he will be lucky."

"You spoke to him?" I asked in wonder.

"We do not use words," she replied. "I asked if he knew anything about your white bear."

My heart thudded unevenly. "And did he?"

Malmo nodded. "He knew of the man-bear. That is what they call him."

"Did ... did he know where the bear' is?"

Malmo shook her head. "But he told me that he has heard that the man-bear came from the land across the ice bridge. That at some time the man-bear has traveled over the ice bridge from Toakoro. He did not know in which direction or when. Toakoro is their word for Niflheim. They do not go there. No animals do."

"Why not?"

"They consider it unsafe." Then Malmo stood, breathing in and testing the wind. "We must travel on. It is still a long way to the ice bridge and I must return to my people soon."

Shakily I got to my feet. The bleeding had lessened, and Malmo fashioned a bandage out of the clump of cloth she had pressed to my face. And then we resumed our journey.

We came to the end of the ice forest, and I stepped onto the shore with an immense sense of relief.

We donned our skis, and after that our journey took on a wearying sameness. Day followed day, although you could not call it day at all. It had been a long time since we had seen the sun in the land of endless night. There was no way of keeping track of time passing, though Malmo had an innate sense of when it was time to eat and sleep.

But the endless night in the frozen land at the top of the world wasn't like night back in Njord. Because of the unending whiteness that surrounded us, there was not the same kind of darkness. There was always a dim gray light; the closest thing I could compare it to was twilight back home—the twilight just a few moments before the complete black of night takes over. Yet you could still see a billion dazzling specks of light in the night sky. And when the moon shone, especially the full moon, an eerie pearly-blue light washed the white landscape.

We fell into a rhythm, Malmo and I, working together almost as a husband and wife who had been together for many years. I became nearly as adept as Malmo at skinning a seal, making a snowhouse, telling tales with the story knife. There was an immense satisfaction in doing the jobs well, although satisfaction was beside the point in a place where doing the job well meant surviving another day.

Living in the frozen world became second nature, and I grew to love the breathtaking beauty of the vast white landscape. And yet a part of me longed for the sight of a green blade of grass, or the smell of rain and wet earth. The only colors in the land were white, gray, and pale blue, with the occasional burst of red from the spilled blood of a seal, and even then there was no smell at all.

We traveled a long time, long enough for the sun to make an appearance in the form of a thin band of light on the horizon. And each day I could see Malmo becoming more restless. Finally, as we crested an icy summit, she said, "I need to return to my people. If we do not reach the ice bridge soon, I will have to turn back."

I began to worry that there was no ice bridge at all, that it would turn out to be nothing but a fragment of an old myth. But, I reminded myself, the white bear we had met up with "spoke" of the ice bridge.

It was during this time that I began to think about the man-bear I was seeking. The man, not the white bear, kept entering my thoughts. I had seen his face only briefly, and sometimes I could not remember it, but once in a while it would come clear in my mind, complete with that expression of desolation that ate at my insides. Even when his face was a blur to me, the one thing I never forgot about the man was the color of his hair in the candlelight as I had leaned over him.

I realized I knew nothing about him. Not even his name. To me he was "white bear" or "the white bear who had been a man." But the man with the golden hair had had a name—as well as a life—before the pale queen took it from him. A father, a mother, brothers and sisters perhaps. Friends.

Was he a craftsman? A farmer? A prince? How long ago had the pale queen taken him from his life? If by some miracle he got free of her, would his old life still be there? Would his family be long dead and buried? It seemed likely, from the few words he had spoken of his long captivity. Would there be even a building that once had been home waiting for him, or would it be occupied by strangers? My stomach twisted. And I felt a white-hot surge of anger at the pale queen. Her cruelty.

Why had she done it? He was a handsome man—I had seen that as he slept and when he gazed at me with such anguish. Perhaps that comeliness had been the beginning of her wish to possess him. But the source of her obsession would have to be more than that, to account for such a monstrous act of thievery.

I thought then of the castle. Had that been his home once, transported into the mountain? Parts of it had certainly had the feel of a young man's quarters. Or had the pale queen merely furnished and decorated it in the manner she thought he would prefer?

Then I remembered the room with the musical instruments, and the flauto that I had learned to play. And the sheets of music. I felt sure that those were from the life the white bear, the man, had once known.

That was one thing I knew about him at least. His love of music.