And then it struck me, like a great, ringing kick to the head. And I sat up.
"East of the sun and west of the moon" meant nothing. It was nonsense, like one of Estelle's rhymes. Neddy would have called it a conundrum, his fancy word for riddle. But it was a riddle with no solution. When the stranger with the white bear's eyes told me he was going to the place that lay "east of the sun and west of the moon," he was telling me he was going nowhere, to a place I could not follow him to. Why he chose those words, I did not know. Perhaps it was all he had been allowed to say. Or perhaps it was all he had been told.
Well, it didn't matter. Whether or not the words were a fraud, he was somewhere. And I would find him. I decided I must leave the next day.
"It is too soon," Sofi protested. "You need more time to get better."
"I have to go," I said.
"Then Estelle and I will go with you," Sofi replied, her tone as definite as mine had been.
I stared at her. "I don't even know where I am going."
"I will start you on your journey then. Surely you know which direction you will begin with?"
"North," I replied. "The sleigh was going north. And the man Tuki spoke of a land of snow and ice. I think the pale queen took him to her home in that land."
Sofi nodded, then said, "I have something that might help you." She left the room.
She returned bearing a rolled-up sheet of parchment. I guessed immediately what it was. A map. It had been her husband's, brought back from a sea voyage. He had been a sailor; it was at sea that he had died.
It was a good map, made by a Portuguese mapmaker. "It is yours now," Sofi said with a smile.
"Oh no, I cannot take it."
"Yes," she replied, and would not let me refuse.
She unrolled the map, flattening it on the table in the kitchen, and pointed to a spot in the southwest of Fransk. "This is where we are," she said.
I found Njord on the map and couldn't believe my eyes. The distance the white bear had traveled was fantastic. In seven days he had journeyed through most of Fransk, at least half of Njord, the countries of Tyskland, Holland, and Danemark, as well as the sea that lay between Njord and Danemark. Such a journey, on foot, would take me a year or more, and that did not take into account getting across the waters of Njordsjoen.
Sofi was watching my face, seeing the wonder and then the dismay there, and she put a comforting hand on mine.
"Courage, " she said.
I studied the map for some time and decided that I would travel to the port town of La Rochelle, where I hoped to find a ship to take me north. I had no idea how I was going to pay for such a journey but thought maybe I could work for my passage. It would be much faster to travel by ship than to make the long trek north on foot. It turned out that Sofi's brother lived in La Rochelle and knew the harbor well. She thought he might be able to help me. And Sofi and Estelle were going to take me all the way to La Rochelle. Sofi had not seen her brother for a long time, she said, and accompanying me was the perfect opportunity for her and Estelle to visit.
We set off the next morning.
Troll Queen
OUR ARRIVAL AT THE PALACE was all I could have desired. There was a large assemblage to greet us, everyone brilliantly attired. And I was told that Simka had been working night and day on the sumptuous feast that we will enjoy this evening. (Simka's prowess in the kitchen more than makes up for her foul disposition.) The only thing that marred the homecoming was a trace of unease I could read in the eyes of my closest advisers. No one dared to say anything out loud when I said that the softskin man would be given the suite of rooms beside my own, but I sensed their displeasure.
Urda—sour, complaining Urda—is the only one who would ever dare to say that I am making a mistake in bringing the softskin here. All the way home in the sleigh she griped at me, saying that my people will never accept a softskin in the palace. I finally had to stop her tongue with my arts. (How she loathes it when I do that!)
Urda is wrong. I have always been able to bend my people to my will.
I will present him to the entire court at the feast this evening. But I will not tell them that the softskin man is to be their king. Better to wait, give them time to grow used to his presence here, before I tell them to prepare for a wedding.
As for me, to see him walk through the gates of my palace is the culmination of all my dreams, my plans. The joy I feel is immense; it burns inside me as though I have swallowed a piece of the sun.
Rose
THE JOURNEY TO La Rochelle took less than a fortnight. I was glad of the company of Sofi and Estelle, though I worried about taking so much from them and giving so little in return. Sofi brushed aside my concerns, but I vowed I would find some way to repay her.
At one point during the trip, Estelle said to me, "Are you not afraid to go to la terre congelée?"
La terre congelée was what Estelle called the Arktisk region. I thought for a moment and then said, "No."
"Ah," Estelle said with a broad smile, "you are just like Queen Maraboo!"
I laughed. "I'm not too handy when it comes to ghost-wolves and creatures with no bones."
Estelle laughed, too, and our talk turned to La Rochelle and her uncle Serge. But it was true what I had said to Estelle. I was not afraid. I had always had a secret desire to someday go to the lands of the far north. When I was little Father had explained to me that the world was round, and he described the lands of ice and snow at the farthest points to the north and south of our world. He even demonstrated this for me on a small leather ball, painting two splotches of white at opposite ends. It was amazing to me that there were places in the world where for part of the year the sun never shone at all, and for the other part it shone all the time. And where the snow never melted away. And where there were more white bears and snow owls than people. Knowing that I was a north-born, it made sense that I should be so fascinated by the Arktisk region; it was in my nature, the direction I naturally gravitated toward.
When I was a child one of my favorites of Neddy's old stories was of the goddess Freya, and how she journeyed through the world, looking for her lost husband, Odur.
"Odur is in every place where the searcher has not come. Odur is in every place that the searcher has left."
It was one of the stories I had told the white bear in the castle, and I knew it was one of his favorites as well. He would hold his head up, eyes alert, especially when I came to the part about how Freya searched everywhere, even going to the frozen land of the far north, the land called Niflheim, where she came upon a grand ice palace. Freya was imprisoned there, in that palace, and had she not been one of the immortals, she would have been frozen alive. But she escaped, using her cloak of swan feathers, which carried her swiftly through the air whenever she put it on, and she soared along the northern lights until she was safely home in Asgard. She never did find her husband, Odur. And I remember thinking as a child that she gave up way too easily. He was somewhere, I had thought, and she ought to have found him.
I made Neddy tell me that story so many times that he finally got tired of it and refused to tell it ever again. But I continued to dream of frozen wondrous Niflheim and pictured myself traveling there on my white bear. How strange life was, I thought, that it should turn out that I would go to the frozen lands not with my white bear but in search of him.
Sofi's brother, Serge, was happy to see his sister and niece. He and his wife were very generous, giving me food and lodging. Serge said he would find out about ships traveling north, though he warned me that passage would not be cheap. When I suggested I might work for my passage, he was polite enough not to laugh outright, but he did say that there wasn't much call for young girls as shipmates.