North Child (16 page)

The white bear visited me daily as I worked the loom. Usually it was in the afternoon and he would lie on the rug near me. I took to talking to him, though he rarely responded. I would tell him of my family, of life on our farmhold, and of the places I had explored beyond the farm. I would also tell him stories, both from my memory of the ones Neddy had told me and those from the Njorden book I had found.

I didn't know what he thought of my chatter, but I came to believe he liked the sound of my voice. If I was in a quiet mood, he would raise his head expectantly, as if waiting for me to start talking.

I grew used to his presence, and his sheer immensity no longer distracted me. A wordless communication developed between us. I could read his mood by the way he held his head, the small sounds he made, and even the way his fur lay on his body. Much of what I understood about him I saw in his eyes, those deep, expressive black eyes. I sensed something almost human in him, a thin, wavering strain of thought and feeling that was decidedly nonanimal. I believed it was where his limited ability to speak came from.

I wondered if at one time he had been either all animal or all human, and then those two elements of him were mingled, though clearly the animal in him had become the stronger and that was why words were so difficult.

There were times I sensed he hated that nonanimal flicker inside him, wished he could obliterate it altogether. And there were times I felt he clung to it for dear life. There were also a few times that I felt that this barely perceptible flicker was the only thing that kept him from ripping me to shreds or devouring me whole.

On one occasion I was coming out of my room on my way to the loom. I had just bathed and my face was flushed from the heat of the water I had bathed in. The white bear was standing just outside the door, and I nearly ran into him.

I heard a low growl coming from deep in his throat, and I glanced up into his eyes. To my horror they were blank, almost unrecognizable, with a terrible hunger in them. I stepped back, my heart thudding in my chest. He bared his teeth, something he'd never done before, and the growl grew louder. He took a step forward.

Without thinking I darted backwards into the room, slamming the door behind me.

Desperately my hand scrabbled for a key or lock, but there was none. I pressed my back against the door, knowing how futile the effort was, given the enormous strength of the white bear. Batting down a door would be child's play to him. I heard a scratching sound on the door, then a sudden unearthly roar, like that of a creature in indescribable torment.

The roar echoed for a moment, then all was still. I waited a very long time before venturing out of my room again.

After I finished the weaving of the meadow from home, I moved on to a design from one of the stories I'd read in the Njorden book. It was a harsh tale about the trick Loki played on Idun, the guardian of the golden apples that ensured immortality to the gods. My weaving depicted Idun in the place the terrible giant Thiassi had taken her – a cavernous hall lit by columns of fire that burst from the earth.

When I was finished I was well pleased. I had intended both pieces as wall hangings, inspired by the tapestries on the walls of the castle. But though there was no fault or mistake in either, when I gazed at them side by side I began to feel dissatisfied with both. The first was lovely to look at, but it had no feeling to it. It was a pretty scene, remote and at a distance. The second piece had an anger to it that made me feel unsettled and unhappy.

I decided to take a rest from weaving to work on another kind of project instead. So I set about repairing my torn cloak. It was the last thing Neddy had given me, and if I was ever allowed to return home, I would need my “compass”. Strangely, I gave no thought to making a new cloak. The old one was a link to my life back home, and I didn't want to break that link despite the lie that was woven into it.

Using the castle's good, strong thread and sharp needles, I quickly mended the cloak. And the white bear watched me, as he always did. When I came to the part of the wind rose where Father had hidden the truth, I felt tears prick my eyes. I thought of my father, of the pain I must have caused him with my anger. He may have been wrong to go along with Mother's lie, but he had done so reluctantly. I remembered the name that Father had called me in his heart.
Nyamh.
And more tears fell.

“You are sad,” came the deep hollow voice.

I jumped a little, because the bear had not spoken to me in a week or more. But then I nodded, wiping my face with the edge of the cloak.

“Why?”

And the words came tumbling out as I told the white bear the whole tale of the birth-direction lie. When I was done, we were both silent. Then he said, “Rose…Nyamh…East…North…West…South… You are…”

I laughed a little. “I am
all
of the directions?”

He nodded.

“Are you saying you think the whole birth-direction superstition is nonsense?”

“No.” He sounded definite, but when I asked him to explain what he meant, he did not answer but lay with his eyes shut, as though the small amount of speaking he had done had worn him out.

I sat watching him, confused but no longer sad. Again, despite his size and despite the fact that he had taken me from my family and home, I felt stirrings of sympathy for him.

“Is Sara well?” I blurted out.

He opened his eyes halfway. “Yes.” The word was expelled from his chest like an arrow pulled from a wound. And then he left the room.

I thought of Sara as I finished mending and cleaning the cloak. I was relieved to hear that she had recovered. And I believed it to be true; for some reason I could not imagine the white bear lying.

I took my mended cloak to my room, folded it neatly, and stored it in my pack from home. Then I returned to the weaving room and began to think about what I wanted to make next on the loom.

My eye had been caught by spools of gold, silver, and pearly moon-coloured threads, and I suddenly decided to make a gown for myself. It was a ridiculous decision. I had never made any clothing that did not have some practical use, and there was certainly no call for ball gowns on a remote, impoverished farmhold. Nevertheless, I decided to do it. After all, there was nothing I
needed.
Everything – my lodging, food, drink – was being taken care of for me. So why not go ahead and make something thoroughly impractical?

At first I could not decide which of the shining threads to use. I was drawn most to the pearly moon-thread, as I called it, but the others were so lovely, too. Then I made an even more ridiculous decision. I would make three gowns. “Well, why not?” I said to myself. I had all the time in the world, and each colour would make a beautiful gown.

I would start with the silver, then gold, leaving the moon-thread for last.

I felt a thrill of excitement as I cast the delicate yet amazingly strong silver thread onto the loom. It should have been difficult to work with, so fine were the strands, but because of the exquisite craftsmanship of the loom, it was not.

I would make the fabric first, I decided, then design a pattern later.

As I wove, my mind twirled pleasurably through dozens of possible dress designs. I knew little about the latest fashions, but there were pictures in the book of Njorden tales, and the gowns worn by Freya, Idun, and Sif were lovely.

The shimmering fabric took shape under my fingers and I was in awe of its beauty. The further I got, the more I began to have doubts about using it to make a dress for myself. It really was fitting only for a princess or some other grand lady, not the daughter of a poor farmer. If (no,
when,
I told myself firmly) I ever left the castle, there would be no place in my life for a gown made of silver fabric.

I decided I would sell it. Such a sumptuous gown would fetch a small fortune, and that kind of money would help pay back all our debts on the farm, or it could enable Neddy to go to Bergen or Oslo to do the scholarly work he had always yearned to do. It could even help set Father up in a mapmaking business of his own.

So I kept weaving and planning the design of the dress. And if I occasionally imagined myself wearing it… Well, there was no harm in that.

When I had woven enough of the glittering silver fabric, I began work on the dress. I went slowly and carefully, unaccustomed as I was to handling such exquisite fabric, and I did not want to make any mistakes.

Because I had to concentrate while I was creating the gown, I did not talk as much to the white bear. As a result he seemed more restless and would not stay with me but would pad in and out of the room with a put-upon expression in his black eyes.

At last I finished. Shaking it out, I held the dress up. It was a simple design, falling to the floor in silvery folds from a high waistline. I decided I must try the gown on, telling myself I just needed to see that it hung right. Remembering the long mirror in my room, I hurried there, carrying the dress. A little nervously I slipped the gown on, my back to the mirror. When I turned around I barely recognized myself. I stared for a moment, then let out a laugh.

I looked ridiculous, like an awkward little girl trying on her mother's wedding dress. I made a face at myself in the mirror, then grinned, saying, “That's what comes of putting a fancy dress on a girl who belongs in muddy boots and torn cloaks.”

I had enjoyed making the dress, anyway, and believed it would fetch a high price, so I launched right into the making of the next, this time using the gold thread. This thread, too, was extraordinary, no thicker than the filament of a spider's web, yet it was just as strong as the silver. I felt like I was working with the spun gold from fairy tales. The dress turned out to be more elaborate than the silver one, and just as lovely.

And so I came to the moon-thread. While I was making the fabric, I told the white bear the tale of the Maid of the North and of how Vaina the song maker tricked Seppo the sky maker into going to the frozen land by singing into creation a giant pine tree with a moon and stars in its branches. By the way the white bear held his head, and the expression in his eyes, I could see that he was listening intently.

I marvelled as the fabric took shape on my loom. The gold and silver had been beautiful, but this was something extraordinary. It seemed from another world entirely, a world you might glimpse on a frozen, misty winter day with the northern lights blazing above. I remembered the first time I had seen the northern lights as a child. I was breathless with excitement, convinced I was seeing the way into a whole new land, or into Asgard itself, where Freya and Idun and the thunder god Thor lived.

I hadn't understood Father's logical explanation about the phenomenon of the aurora. To me it was sheer magic. And the fabric I had made looked almost as much like the northern lights as it did the moon. At once moon white, the cloth would come startlingly alive with pearly, rippling colour when the light caught it in a certain way.

When the time came to design the gown, I didn't look at any books but let the fabric itself guide me.

I cut and stitched and pieced the gown with the greatest concentration. Then I found a spool of pearly moon-ribbon and a small bowl of pearly buttons I had not noticed before, and used them for the finishing touches. I barely noticed if the white bear was there in the room with me.

The moment I was done, and had sewed on the last pearly ribbon and button, I ran to my room so fast I was out of breath when I got there. And in my haste I forgot to shut the door behind me.

When I stood before the mirror in this dress, I did not laugh. For just a moment I saw myself as beautiful. And I smiled at my reflection. Dreamily I thought how I might put my hair up and wind a length of moon-ribbon through it.

Then I heard a noise. A gusty, sighing sound like I had heard once before, when I first came to the castle. I spun around and saw the white bear standing in the doorway.

I froze. I was afraid for the first time in a long while. We stared at each other. For what felt like an eternity, all I was aware of were those black eyes, fierce and sad, fixed on mine. Finally the white bear lowered his head. He kept it low for several moments. Then he raised it again, turned, and walked away and out of sight.

My cheeks were flushed and my heart beat fast. I crossed to the door and shut it. I noticed that my hands were shaking.

Quickly I took off the dress, my fingers trembling. I donned my old clothing. Next to the glory of the moon gown, my worn woollen dress looked particularly shabby. Instead of wasting time on impractical ball gowns, I should have been making sturdy new clothing for myself.

“Enough of fairy-tale moon dresses,” I told myself firmly. But my face was still hot and I didn't know why.

Glowing.

The moon through a doorway.

Breath hard in my throat.

Heart full to burst.

The moon through a doorway.

And in its light…