West Read online

  Charles understood. “If it wasn’t for your wild nature, I would still be a white bear. Or worse,” he once said to me, when I had finished apologizing for being gone overlong.

  Even after the birth of Winn, my white bear accepted my wanderlust. He would just brush my forehead with his lips and say, “Off with you.”

  I loved our bairn with all my heart, knew from the moment I kissed that wrinkled, damp face for the first time that I would have given my life for him. But at the same time, it was perhaps the hardest test I had ever faced, balancing my wild, northern nature with that love. Because that is the truth of a bairn, that they need you, body and soul, and I was tethered to him in a way I had never known.

  Charles felt the same way, but for him being tethered was exactly what he wanted. Having roots, a home he could call his own, after almost one hundred and fifty years of roaming the world as a white bear, was all the happiness he desired.

  It was odd, I suppose, that I still sometimes called him White Bear, but I did. Charles didn’t come easily to my tongue. It was as if that person taken from his life by the Troll Queen so long ago was something of a stranger to me, and in some deep down way, I would always think of him as a white bear.

  I would occasionally slip. The first time I actually called him White Bear after we were wed, he flinched. But then he smiled.

  “So be it,” he said, pulling me to him. “After all, it was as a white bear that I first loved you.”

  “And I you,” I whispered into his shoulder.

  I’m embarrassed to say, however, that most often I called him such things as “my love” and “dear.” Hardly words I would ever have imagined myself saying back when I was young and wild, climbing trees and falling into ponds.

  Sib broke into my thoughts, telling me that she had just checked on Estelle and that the herbal remedies Sib had given her had done nothing to relieve the girl’s seasickness.

  “Poor Estelle,” I said. And indeed Estelle had had a rough time this past year. When her mother, Sofi, had died unexpectedly of a wasting sickness, there were no relatives left to care for her, her uncle Serge having emigrated to Spania. Charles and I were happy to bring her into our family. We loved her dearly, and she was a resilient girl. Still, the loss of her mother had been hard.

  We thought a journey to Njord would be a welcome distraction, and because she had always longed to see the world, Estelle was thrilled at the prospect. Until we boarded the Guillemot. With the first roll of the ship, she had been laid low by seasickness.

  Estelle

  I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE. I wished to die. The ship felt like a giant hand holding me and shaking me as if I was a pair of dice in some horrible game meant to kill me.

  I missed my maman. I missed Fransk. I missed land under my feet that didn’t heave and bounce around. Tante Sib said I must drink water and eat hard crackers, but if I did, I only threw them up.

  I had wanted to journey to see the wide world, but the moment I stepped onto the miserable ship, I wished I had not. I would have traded my favorite dress, the sky blue one Maman made for me before she died, to be back on solid land.

  Even though I loved Rose like I loved my maman, I could not help being most unpleasant to her and to Tante Sib.

  Rose said they understood and that I must have courage, that we would be in Trondheim soon. She even promised to make me a new dress or perhaps buy me one from a nice shop in town. That made me feel better for a moment, but then the ship lurched and I threw up again even though there was nothing left to throw up.

  Mon Dieu, s’il te plaît, sauve-moi!

  Rose

  AS SIB AND I STOOD at the ship’s railing, I noticed that the wind had quickened and that the surface of Njordsjoen had grown choppier. I glanced sideways at Sib, whose silver hair was flying around her face. She wore an abstracted, faraway expression, one I’d seen many times before. And for the first time, I impulsively asked the question I’d always wanted to ask.

  “Where do you go, Sib?”

  She turned to gaze at me, surprised.

  “I mean, when your face is like that, where do you go?” I said.

  She hesitated for a moment, then said, “I’m listening to the wind.”

  I must have looked confused, for she gave a little laugh.

  “It’s true. Did you know that there are many winds, Rose? Many more than just the north, south, east, and west winds.”

  “How many?” I asked.

  “More than can be counted. And each land has its own names for their winds.”

  “Tell me,” I said.

  She smiled and said, “All right. For example, the wind, the gentle one that was just playing on your skin a few minutes ago, before the direction changed, that was the ciuin wind, as we call it in Skottland. It is a favorite of mine.”

  “And you know the names of all these winds?”

  “Many,” she said.

  “How do you know so much about wind, Sib?” And despite our close bond, I was struck, not for the first time, by how little I knew of her past, before coming to the ice palace in Niflheim. I had asked, but she always seemed to deflect my questions, and I was left with the vague impression of a life spent in many different places, with no family still living.

  “I had a teacher, and I paid attention,” she answered briefly. I was about to ask more, but she changed the subject to Estelle.

  “I wish there was something I could do to make her feel better,” said Sib.

  I nodded. I was lucky that I had never been prone to seasickness, and Winn, too, seemed to love being on board the ship, his bright blue eyes taking it all in. After those first few months of endless squalling, he had turned out to be a good-natured, easy bairn. He slept well on the ship, lulled by the roll of the waves.

  The sky had darkened, and the ship suddenly gave a sharp pitch.

  Sib looked out at the sea, a puzzled look on her face. “I don’t know this wind,” she said. “It doesn’t feel right to me. ’Tis a good thing we are almost to Trondheim.”

  “Poor Estelle,” I murmured, trying to steady myself on the rolling deck. “She will be glad to be back on land again.”

  One of the sailors shouted out that all passengers should go below, and Sib, Winn, and I went to join Estelle in our cabin.

  Neddy

  I BEGAN TO BE VERY TIRED of hearing about Mother’s dream, and her incessant picking apart of the portents of ravens and forests covered with falling ash.

  “Onions,” Father kept saying. And another time he said that he had it on good authority that ashes were a portent of birth. “Perhaps Rose and Charles are planning another bairn,” he suggested cheerfully.

  But even that didn’t make Mother hold her tongue. Quite the contrary.

  Still I had to confess that when the Guillemot sailed into the Trondheim harbor and we saw Rose at the rail waving to us, I was much relieved.

  She was carrying the bairn they called Winn in her arms. On one side of her was the silver-haired Sib, and on the other was the girl Estelle, whom they had adopted into their family when her mother died. Even at a distance I could see the young girl was not feeling well.

  When they disembarked, we all greeted them with hugs and tears of joy. Mother held out her arms to Winn, who went to her straightaway. She began to quiz Rose about his birth direction, but Rose just shook her head with a smile, refusing to be drawn.

  The girl Estelle, whom I had met during one of my visits to Fransk, made us all laugh when she got down on her knees, saying, “Mon Dieu, how I love you, ground that does not heave and roll beneath me.”

  I turned to greet Sib, and the most extraordinary and unexpected thing happened. A breeze coming off the water had blown her silver hair across her face, and as she brushed it away, our eyes met. In that moment, my heart did a most unusual flip-flopping inside my chest and suddenly began to hammer as if I had just done a tremendous sprint around the harbor.

  I must have looked a little stunned, for she said in her sweet,
low voice, “Is something wrong, Neddy? You do remember me, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” I stuttered.

  And in truth I remembered Sib well, even from the very first time I had seen her, one of the ragtag group of survivors cresting the top of the ridge of Tatke Fjord. Though she had been quiet, she had stood out with her pale skin and silver hair. Then, and even now, I was not able to guess her age. Her skin was unlined, even luminous, but there was the silver hair, and occasionally she would have an expression on her face of the sort you’d see on a very old woman, one who had lived through a lifetime of joys as well as hardships.

  But none of this accounted for the odd hammering of my heart.

  Winn let out a cry, and Rose said, “Someone is hungry!” And we grabbed up their luggage and began to head for home.

  A brisk wind had kicked up, and as we passed a group of sailors, we heard them talking loudly about the rough seas and how they’d heard there were violent storms to the east. A thread of uneasiness went through me. Charles was headed here from the east. I fervently hoped that his ship was not affected by the storms.

  White Bear

  EVEN THOUGH MY STAY in Stockholm in the court of King Gustav had only lasted a fortnight, it had felt an eternity. I couldn’t wait to be done with the gossip, the intrigue, the sheer artificiality of court life.

  The only pleasant moments for me were when I was playing my flauto with the orchestra and could hear the soaring music all around me.

  King Gustav had an immense love of music, had put together what I believed to be the very first true orchestra in all of Europa, perhaps the entire world. It was called Kungliga Hovkapellet and featured some of the finest musicians it had been my privilege to play alongside. King Gustav spared no expense when it came to his orchestra, and he was an extremely generous and charming patron. But I quickly became aware that he also had a sly and ruthless side, and a terrible temper that could erupt at any moment.

  There was a good deal of political intrigue in the court, and King Gustav showed signs of paranoia, to the point that he even took me aside one day, asking if I thought the treble viol player had the look of a poisoner about him.

  But the hardest thing about it all was being away from home, separated from Rose and our bairn, as well as Estelle, whom I now thought of as a daughter, and Sib. I couldn’t wait to be reunited with them.

  I had placed the silver Valois ring on Rose’s thumb a little more than three years ago. It was the ring I had given her just before I was taken away by the Troll Queen to the land that lay east of the sun and west of the moon, the ring Rose had worn on her thumb throughout the long and difficult journey to find me. Valois was the title of the line of royalty from which I was descended, though I had known nothing of my past until Neddy helped me piece it together.

  During these past three years, I have felt like the luckiest man in all the land to be able to wake up and look into those violet eyes every morning.

  Still, I would be lying if I were to say I had not thought about the great what if of my life. What if the Troll Queen had never spotted me that day, playing on the hillside with other children near the castle where I lived as prince of Fransk? What if I had not forgotten that cursed red ball and instead had gone inside earlier, with the other children? What if the Troll Queen had not kidnapped me, if her father had not then cursed me to be a white bear?

  If those “what-if”s had not happened, I would have grown up to be king of Fransk.

  King.

  Unfathomable.

  I thought of King Gustav, of his fine robes and resplendent palace, of the orchestra he had created. But I also thought of his three successive wives and a host of children he seemed barely to know, of the backbiting courtiers and the air of distrust and intrigue that seemed to surround him.

  No. It was true that one hundred fifty years enchanted as a white bear had almost destroyed me. But at the end of it there was Rose. My heart-mate.

  What ifs be damned. All that mattered was my life with Rose and our family.

  The seas were rough, and there was talk of high winds from the east. All the better, I thought, for it would carry me that much faster to Trondheim.

  Mother

  ROSE EXPLAINED TO ME how she and Charles had been undecided about what to name their bairn and that while they were making up their minds, they had taken to calling him Winn.

  I seized on that, for I quickly sensed that the bairn was a west child through and through.

  “Nonsense,” Rose had replied when I told her my feeling. “He is called Winn only because of Estelle and the illustration in a book. I already told you I have no idea what direction I was facing when I gave birth.”

  I did not believe her, but could tell by the stubborn set of her chin, one I knew so well, that she would admit to nothing further on the subject.

  So I shifted my attention to Sib. Finding her alone in the back garden, I asked her about the circumstances of Winn’s birth.

  “A wonderful day it was,” she said.

  “Where was Rose, when she birthed him?”

  “In her bed, in the room she and Charles share,” Sib replied.

  “And does the bed face the doorway?” I had not been to Rose and Charles’s home in Fransk. Neddy was the only one of us who had.

  “Yes,” said Sib.

  “And which direction does that door lie?” I asked, leaning forward.

  She smiled at me in such a way that I knew Rose had told her of our family’s birth direction superstition.

  “I can’t say exactly,” she said slowly. “But there was a lovely wind that day.”

  “What wind?” I asked.

  She smiled again, and said, “Did you know that in some places in the world, there is something quite similar to your birth direction lore? It has to do with the winds.”

  “There is?” I said, much interested.

  “Yes,” she said. “In those places, they believe that the direction the wind is blowing when a child is born will be a determining factor in its life.”

  I gaped at her. “What places?”

  “Oh, I believe in pockets of Skottland, and a few others, less well known.”

  I found this fascinating but wanted to get back to the subject at hand. “You never did answer me, Sib. What is the wind that was blowing when Winn was born?”

  She laughed. “Very well. It was Zephyrus.”

  “And in what direction does Zephyrus blow?” I asked eagerly.

  “Is that Winn I hear?” she said, looking toward the bedroom where he was napping. “Sounds like his hunger cry.” And she hurried away.

  I quickly went to look for Neddy and found him at his worktable.

  “Do you know the names of the winds, Neddy?” I asked.

  “A few,” he said. “They are sometimes named in stories I have read.”

  “I was just wondering if you were familiar with the wind called Zephyrus?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “That is one that is much spoken of by the old Gresk poets. In fact, it is featured in the tale about Psyche. Zephyrus is the wind that blows her to the god known as Eros.”

  “Yes, fine,” I said, impatient. “But in what direction does Zephyrus blow?”

  “I believe it is a gentle west wind,” Neddy said. “But why—”

  “Aha!” I said in triumph. “It is just as I thought.”

  I then left Neddy, who wore a look of abject confusion.

  Estelle

  THINGS WERE DIFFERENT IN NJORD. Some of it was very nice, like the cloudberries with fresh cream, and the kjottboller, the tender little balls of meat that tasted so good. And I loved the bluebells and ladyslipper flowers that bloomed all over. But some of it was not so nice, like the slimy pickled herring Rose’s maman, Eugenia, loved so well, and how chilly it was, so that even though it was summer, the air still felt cold, especially at night, and I had to stay by the fire to keep my fingers from going numb. And the sun stayed out so much longer. I missed the moon.

 
; But I liked the town of Trondheim very much, and it was so close to walk there, not like living out in the farmlands as I had in Fransk first with my maman and later with Rose and Charles. It reminded me of visits to La Rochelle, all the shops and people, but in Trondheim the buildings were painted in bright colors and there were different kinds of shops than in La Rochelle. People were nice too, smiling at me when I passed them, especially when I had Winn in the sling around my shoulders. It faced forward so his big, toothless smile always caught people’s eyes.

  I liked Rose’s many nieces and nephews. Her brother Willem and sister Sara had three children each, and I especially liked Gudrun, who was Willem’s eldest daughter. She had two blond braids and laughed a lot. The only thing I didn’t like was when she told me scary stories about the Nokken who lived under the bridge that went over the Nidelva River, the bridge I crossed every day when I went into town. She and the other children warned me that the Nokken could shape-shift and turn himself into a white horse who would offer children rides and then plunge into the water, carrying them to their deaths.

  Gudrun’s brother, Anders, also told me of the hideous old ghost witch named Pesta, who carried a broom and a rake. She had been around since the terrible plague hundreds of years ago and would travel from farm to farm. If she carried the rake, only some of the people living in the farm would die, but if she carried a broom, everyone in the family would die. They said she had been seen lately, in the distance.

  Rose caught Anders telling me about Pesta and scolded him. She told me later that these were just imaginary stories, like the ones I used to make up when I was young, the ones about ghost-wolves and troll-witches.

  I knew she wanted to comfort me, but because I knew that the story of Rose’s journey to the land that lay east of the sun and west of the moon was a true story, I knew there really were evil creatures in the world like trolls, or Huldre, as Rose said they called themselves.