North Child (23 page)

There was one story in particular that made us both laugh. It was an old Njorden tale about a crotchety husband who always complained about how easy his wife had it, how he had to go off every day to the fields while all she did was sit around the house. The wife grew tired of his complaints and one day said to him, “Do you think you could do the work at home better?”

“Of course,” the husband replied. “Any man could.”

“Then why do we not switch tasks? Tomorrow I will mow the hay, and you will stay here and do the housework.”

The husband agreed to the plan.

Needless to say, while the wife busily mowed row after row of hay, the hapless husband wound up accidentally killing the pig, spilling cream all over the kitchen floor, and letting every last drop of ale run out of the barrel. The part of the story that amused the white bear most was when the husband dropped all the freshly washed clothes in the mud, having gotten tangled up in the washing line.

“I suppose you think you could do better?” I laughed, forgetting that I was speaking not to a person but to a large white bear. He stopped laughing, and I looked up in time to see the unhappiness in his eyes before he left the room.

I thought then of his sigh as he had watched me rinsing the white nightshirt.

I grew better at playing the flauto. I had taken to performing for the white bear, sifting through the sheet music to find the simplest piece for a beginner. I would sit on a small velvet chair and he would lie on the rug at my feet and listen, again with his eyes closed. There was one melody in particular, I could tell, he liked more than any other. It bore the title “Estivale”, which I figured out meant “of the summer”. I rarely could play it straight through without some kind of mistake, but he didn't seem to care. It didn't matter that my playing was less than impressive; for him it was just that I did it at all. And what mattered to me was the stillness when I was done, and the pleasure in his eyes.

One afternoon, many months after my visit to my family, I played “Estivale” better than I ever had, and the white bear let out a deep sigh of pleasure. Looking into his eyes, which seemed more human than before, I suddenly blurted out, “Who are you?”

Before he could react I continued, unable to stop myself. “Where are you from?” I asked. “How long have you lived here in this mountain? Are you under an enchantment? If you are, how can it be broken?”

Even before the last word died on my lips, I regretted my rashness. The ease between us vanished at once; his eyes clouded over, the animal blankness came back. Then he got up and left the room.

The next day he did not come to the room at the usual time. After waiting for a long while, I realized he was not coming at all. I cursed my impulsive tongue and felt lonely and sorry for myself the rest of the day. I tried working at the loom, but it held no appeal for me and I soon gave up. Later I saw Tuki scurrying along behind the woman Urda, and I loudly called out to him by name, but he stuck close to her and they soon disappeared into the kitchen. The door, I discovered, was locked behind them. I went up to my peephole to the sky and sat there at the window, numb, staring at the branch. It was bare. Winter was not far off. Except for the month spent at home, I had been at the castle in the mountain for almost a full year.

That evening my nightmare was particularly intense. My scream still burning my throat, I lay there, shivering, torn between fear and anger. My visitor had scurried away, scared off again by my scream. How long was I supposed to live like this? How was I going to stand it? I thought I would surely go mad if I could not learn who slept beside me night after night. Was it a monster, or a hollow-faced nothing, or the white bear himself? I felt that if I only knew the answer, I could go on, I could endure my life there in the castle.

Suddenly I thought of the candle and flint Mother had given me. What had she said? That the candle would stay lit even in a stiff wind and that the flint would spark a light every time. I wondered uneasily if the candle and flint could possibly light the unlightable darkness.
Dare I try?

All the next day I wrestled with the question. The white bear did reappear briefly for our afternoon reading, but I was distracted and he was remote, restless, more animal than human. I tried to play “Estivale”, but my fingers felt leaden and my breath short. When I finished we just sat there, still and unhappy, a strained silence between us. Suddenly the white bear got up and exited the room, giving me an unreadable look over his shoulder as he went.

I wandered the castle restlessly, my thoughts jumbled and my head aching. Again I had no will for weaving. Nor did I have any appetite for my evening meal, and leaving the food on the table barely touched, I sat for a time on the red couch, gazing into the fire. I was still undecided. I told myself the candle wouldn't work, then countered by saying that it was still worth trying. I told myself what a horrible mistake I would be making, how trying to light the darkness might upset the balance, possibly even bring harm. But then I reasoned it was a simple enough thing, lighting a candle. No one would even know; I could light the candle, have a quick peek, and that would be that, no one the wiser.

I went to bed as usual, and soon after, the lights were extinguished. I still did not know what I was going to do. I had not actually gotten out the candle and flint but had left them at the top of my pack so I could get at them easily.

I was wide awake when my visitor climbed into bed next to me. I listened closely to the rhythm of his breathing, and after what felt like hours, it seemed to be regular and deep and I was sure he was asleep.

Quietly I slipped out of bed and crossed to the cupboard. I had left the door partway open because it had a slight squeak to it and I didn't want to risk making noise. My hand shaking slightly, I felt in my pack for the candle and flint. They were where I had left them. I took them in hand and slowly crossed to the bed.

I felt my way carefully to the other side of the bed and stood there for several long moments, trembling, listening to him breathe.

I fought against feelings of panic that shuddered through me.
I should not do this.
But I had to know.

I turned my back to the bed. Then, taking a firm grip on the candle in my left hand, I squeezed hard on the mechanism of the flint. A bright spark flared, but I had misjudged the placing of the candlewick in the dark. Moving the wick closer, I tried again. This time it worked. The candle lit and slowly, silently, I turned towards the bed, holding the candle aloft.

For one hundred and fifty softskin years (a period of time in Huldre called an
alkakausi
), my softskin boy was to be a white bear. And at the end of those hundred and fifty years, if the conditions were not met, he would be mine.

The conditions were meant to punish me but also to challenge me. It was the sort of intricate, elaborate contest my father enjoyed setting in motion and then watching unfold.

It was unfortunate my father died before seeing this particular challenge wind down to its conclusion.

But I have watched. And waited, patiently I think.

There were a few half-hearted attempts along the way. It was always tricky for him, balancing the bear and the man inside him. Mostly the bear won.

As the hundred and fifty years draw to a close, this last one, this softskin girl with the sturdy body and violet eyes, has come very close. She has nearly fulfilled one of the conditions.

But not the most difficult. I always knew her curiosity would be her undoing.

It was not a monster that lay sleeping on the white sheets. Nor a faceless horror. Nor even the white bear.

It was a man.

His hair was golden, glowing bright as a bonfire in the light of the candle. And his features were fair, I suppose, but he was a stranger and that somehow was the greatest shock of all – that I had been lying all these months beside a complete stranger. I had to hold the candle steady against the violent shudder that shook my body. Then I noticed the stranger was wearing the white nightshirt, the one I had woven. It fitted him well, not too wide nor too narrow across the shoulders; the sleeves falling to his wrists, neither too long nor too short. I thought how lucky I had been in estimating the size, with only the feeling of his weight on the mattress to go by, then realized how absurd I was to be standing there thinking about how well the nightshirt fitted.

He lay on his side. I stared down at his hand, which curled gently on the white sheet in front of him. There was a silver ring on his smallest finger. I could see sparse golden hairs on the back of his hand, and the curved fingers seemed vulnerable to me. I suddenly felt ashamed, staring down at this sleeping stranger in a pool of candlelight. I felt myself blush, my skin hot and uncomfortable. I raised the candle, thinking to blow it out at once but hesitating briefly for a last look at his face.

And then his eyes opened.

I let out a cry, my breath going short. They were his eyes, the white bear's eyes. My body jerked with the shock of seeing familiar, even well-loved, eyes inside a stranger's face.

In that moment the candle tipped and hot wax spilled onto the stranger, onto the shoulder of the white nightshirt.

He let out a cry of his own, and the sound of it shall remain seared in my heart for ever, so horrible was it to my ears. It had nothing to do with the pain of hot wax burning the skin but instead held an enormous aching grief; it was a keening of loss and death and betrayal.

“What have you done?” were the words wrung out of him. It was a stranger's voice yet held dim echoes of the white bear.

But even worse than that cry, and what pierced me even deeper, was the look in his eyes. The utter hopelessness.

“No!” I cried out, and I became aware that something was happening around me. There was an immense roaring in my ears that obliterated all sound. Shards of light and colour exploded against my eyes so that I had to close them, and my feet were standing on nothing. I had a sensation of falling yet not moving at all. Flinging my arms out, I reached for the stranger with the golden hair, but my fingers touched nothing. And there
was
nothing, except sound and colour and a terrifying spinning sensation.

Suddenly I felt cold air on my skin, and my feet were on solid ground. Opening my eyes I saw that I was no longer in my room in the castle. There was no castle. I was outside in the night, standing beside the mountain, which loomed above me in the darkness of night.

The stranger with the hopeless eyes was standing in front of me. He was tall and I had to tilt my head back to look up at him. Just behind his head was the moon, gibbous and bright, with a cloud floating past it.

“What have you done?” he said again, this time in a whisper.

“I'm sorry,” I answered, my own voice breaking, the words pathetic and flimsy in my ears. I wanted to avert my eyes from his, from the pain, but I could not.

“If you had only held on one last cycle of the moon…” He trailed off, though his eyes remained on mine.

“What…” I began urgently, not wanting to know but needing to, “what would have happened then?”

“I would have been freed. After so long…” He hesitated. “I do not know any more how long. It feels like several lifetimes…”

“You were under a spell?”

“Yes. White bear by day; boy…then man…by night. I could not speak of it. The only way I could be released was for a maiden to live with me, of her own free will, for one year. And during that time she was not to gaze upon my human face.”

I heard a faint jingle of bells, though they registered only dimly, so lost was I in the damning words. “And now?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“I go with her. For ever.”

“Who? Who do you go with?”

He shook his head, hopelessness flooding his whole body.

“Can't you tell me?”

“It does not matter. I know her only as Queen, and her land is far.”

“Where is it?” I asked, willing him to tell me.