At any rate, Rose and Charles built a small home for themselves in Fransk, not very far from that castle in the mountain. In fact, they took several wagonfuls of furnishings and other assorted items—mostly musical instruments and weaving paraphernalia, as far as I could make out—from the castle, and then they closed the entrance behind them for good. The spot on which they chose to build their house was close by Rose's friend Sofi and her young daughter, Estelle. At first we were all disappointed that they did not make their home in Njord, but the port of La Rochelle was not too distant, and we managed to visit back and forth at least once a year.
Charles dedicated himself to music and, in fact, invented a new design for flautos in which the mouthpiece cap contained a sponge to absorb the moisture from the player's breath. It was quite a success, and Charles became both a sought-after musician and an inventor. However, he never cared much for traveling, preferring to stay at home with his wife and children. They had four—one for each of the cardinal points of the compass, Mother said, although Rose vehemently denied it. They named their firstborn Tuki.
Rose could not give up her wandering ways entirely, though she was blissfully happy at home with her "white bear"—as she still sometimes called him. She occasionally got Charles to go on journeys with her, but her second-born child, Nena, was a north-born, so we all knew it wouldn't be long before Rose was kept busy running after her. Which seemed only right.
And Mother never gave up her superstitious ways. She liked to point out that the skjebne-soke had been right all along about north-born Rose being buried in a deluge of ice and snow. The fact that Rose did not perish, Mother claims, was a minor detail, and probably due to the mitigating factor of being in proximity to a talking white bear. Or some such nonsense, as Father would say.
Neither Rose nor Charles liked to talk much of their adventures with the trolls, but some of the so-called "softskins" whom they had brought out of Niflheim, as well as the crew of the ship Soren had hired to go north to find Rose, must have spread the story, because for many years afterward, there were tales told of a race of trolls living at the top of the world.
Only Rose and her white bear know the whole truth of it.
Glossary
Anglia—England
Arktisk—the Arctic
Danemark—Denmark
Finnland—Finland
Fransk—France (also French)
Gronland—Greenland
Huldre—the troll kingdom (also its people)
Inuit—a people who live in the far north of Greenland and Canada
isbjorn —ice bear
Iseland—Iceland
leidarstein —lodestone
Niflheim—frozen land of the dead
Njord—Norway Njordsjoen—North Sea
Saami—a people who live in the far north of Norway
skjebne-soke —fortune-teller
Tyskland—Germany
Acknowledgments
This book has been a journey of many years, and I, like Rose, had a great deal of help along the way from many people who were generous with their support and wisdom. Above all I would like to thank the "Havamals"—librarians who patiently and wisely led me through the byways of researching Norway, compasses, the Arctic, and white bears.
Many thanks also to Jean Emery and David Wilhelm, who led me to the fjords and were patient and forgiving when lost manuscripts needed to be retrieved (twice!); Sarah McPhee and Lennart Ericsson, who showed me the archipelago; Robin Cruise, who ferreted out all those spinning heads and "of courses," making my writing spotless; and my editor, Michael Stearns, who is Thor, Malmo, Sofi, and Neddy all wrapped into one—and who makes me laugh.
I also want to thank Vita, whose wanderlust and strength of character rival that of Rose, and the real Charles, who has been my north, south, east, and west from the beginning.
Chatting with Edith Pattou
How long have you leen writing?
I've been writing since I was a child. The first story I wrote, at age seven or eight, was called The Adventures of Lipid Shortsock and followed the exploits of a swashbuckling squirrel. At age eleven, inspired by the book Harriet the Spy, my best friend and I started spy notebooks, and I believe I've kept a notebook/journal ever since.
What is your writing process? Do you work at certain hours or on certain days, or under any special conditions?
I write my initial drafts longhand and then edit them on the computer. I don't stick to a strict schedule the way some authors do, but when I'm in the midst of writing a book, I write every day, usually in the morning. I've gone through periods when I find it difficult to concentrate at home (because of things like laundry and phone calls), so I write in restaurants. I have a few favorites, including a pub-style restaurant down the street and a pizza place in a nearby shopping mall. I wrote much of East in the cafe of a local bookstore.
Are your characters inspired by people you know?
It's unusual for one of my characters to be entirely based on a particular person, but there are bits of people I know in all of my characters. For example, Neddy was somewhat inspired by my husband and the strong love he had for his younger sister, as well as the sense of responsibility he always felt for her (although, as far as I know, he's never dabbled in writing bad poetry).
How do you come up with story ideas?
I don't seem to have trouble coming up with ideas. They come into my head all the time (hence the need to carry a notebook!) and they come from everywhere—newspaper stories, dreams, songs, watching a play, sitting in a car on a long drive. Which isn't to say that all these ideas are brilliant—far from it. There's a lot of sifting that needs to be done.
Rose's family is quite large. Did you grow up in a big family?
No. In fact, I am an only child. But when I was young I used to love reading a series of books about a very large, cheerful family called the Happy Hollisters, and I was always envious of friends from big families. When I got married, I was fortunate enough to marry into a large, wonderful family.
One unique feature of East is the use of poetry as the voice of certain characters. What inspired you to do that? Do you write a lot of poetry?
When it came time to give the white bear a voice—and I decided early on that one of the voices telling the story must be his—I initially made it stream-of-consciousness, just a flow of words with lots of dots between them. But each time I read over the words, they seemed wrong. I thought about what it would be like for a human voice buried inside an animal brain to try to find its way out. I decided the words would be very condensed and charged and sensory, which is how I think of poetry. So I decided to make each one of his chapters a poem.
But I don't write a lot of poetry. I won a school prize for a poem I wrote back in elementary school, and it's been downhill ever since (kind of like Neddy, who abandons his early efforts at poetry!). I did enjoy giving it a go in East, so perhaps one day I might rekindle that early spark.