East (30 page)

"Why is it not frozen?" I asked in wonder.

"It is not water as in our lands. Tawktoak Imuk is the black water that kills. To fall into the black water is to die; it makes the flesh fall away from the bone. Here I must leave you, Rose," she said. "I have been too long away from my people." She unstrapped her pack and the tent from her back and placed them on the ground in front of me. Then she donned her skis and said in her calm voice, "You will find the man-bear." She leaned forward and touched her forehead to mine.

"For you," she said, thrusting something into my hands. And then she turned and skied away, back toward the slope we had just descended.

"Wait, Malmo!" I called. "You forgot your gear..."

She turned and waved but did not turn back.

"Malmo!" I called again. "Thank you," I said under my breath.

I watched as she deftly maneuvered the slope and kept my eyes on her until she reached the top. When she got there, I saw Malmo lift her arms to the sky, and then she was gone. There was a white petrel riding the wind directly above the place she had been. I blinked. Was it possible that Malmo had turned herself into a petrel, or had she merely skied down the other side of the slope? I didn't know.

It was only then that I looked down at what I held in my hands. Malmo's story knife.

I turned to look at the ice bridge. All alone. Malmo was gone and I was by myself in a place where most living creatures would not survive more than a day. And I was proposing to enter an even deadlier place, one no animal would enter.

Fighting off the feeling of panic that flickered at the edges of my mind, I put my hand into the pocket of my parka and clutched Queen Maraboo. I said to myself, "I will cross this ice bridge and go into Niflheim and find the white bear and rescue him." After all, I was by then more than half Inuit. I had learned from Malmo how to survive in the frozen world.

I strode over to the ice bridge and placed a foot on it. At once my foot slid wildly, skidding off to the side. I had been wise enough not to put my whole weight on it, or I would surely have fallen, possibly even into the killing river itself. I tried again, even more tentatively. And then again. There was no possible way to get a foothold on the surface of the ice bridge. It was slicker than oil.

When the full impact of the situation hit me, I sank down onto the ground in front of the bridge. I felt tears rise but quickly fought them back, remembering they would only freeze on my face.

"There must be a way across," I muttered to myself. The white bear had crossed the bridge. He might have been on the Troll Queen's sleigh, but maybe not.... And I thought then of the white bear's long, sharp black claws.

What if I were to fashion claws for myself, I thought slowly. And I remembered the
kitchoa,
the tool made of ivory that the Inuit used to simulate the sound of a seal's claws scraping across the ice.

If I could somehow attach the
kitchoa
to the bottom of one foot ... And make something similar for my other foot.

So I set to work. In Malmo's pack I found ivory fishing lures with curved hooks, and I thrust them through some strips of sealskin, which I then tied around my boots so that the hooks poked from the bottom. Attaching the ice scratcher to my other boot was somewhat more difficult, but I managed, using sealskin I had cut into thongs. The scratcher was bulkier and so my gait was lopsided, but I thought I could manage.

I sorted through Malmo's gear and my own, and discovered that she had left me all of her food as well. Gratefully I stowed it, and other bits of her gear that I thought would prove useful, in my own pack. I hoisted the bulging pack—with the tent lashed to it—onto my back and hobbled to the foot of the ice bridge. My uneven gait and the heavy pack made me feel clumsy, but the weight on my back, I thought, might give me more traction.

And so I began my slow, tortuous way across that bridge. Each step was a desperate and heart-stopping act: lifting and then carefully placing each foot, then digging it into the ice and holding my balance. At first everything in me was focused on my feet—lifting, planting, lifting again. As I developed a rhythm, I became more and more aware of that evil restless ribbon of black water below. My heart pounded and I grew lightheaded. I blinked rapidly, trying to clear the dizzy feeling, and endeavored not to look at the river at all. But I had to look down to know where to place my feet. The ice was translucent in places, so I could even see the river through the bridge. Worse, though, was the sound of the moving water. It didn't sound like the rivers back home, which made a soft gurgling, slapping sound as they lapped at the bank. Instead there was an insidious whispering noise, as if the river were saying something to me, beckoning me in an evil sort of way. It was far, far worse than the groaning ice back in the ice forest.

I was only a third of the way across, and my nerves were strung so tight I thought I would break apart. I began to sweat heavily and could feel a thin sheet of ice forming on my face.

Desperate, I willed myself forward, lifting one foot, then the other, and then quickly planting each one again.

It was at about the halfway point when a sharp, biting wind suddenly kicked up, and startled, I lost my concentration. My left foot slid forward and went over the side. I fell, trying desperately to grab hold of something, but my hands slid, my torso slid. And I could feel my whole body sliding inexorably toward the edge. Frantic, I dug into my pocket and grabbed the handle of what I thought to be my small sharp knife, the
ulu.
With all my strength, I stabbed it into the surface of the ice. Then I saw that it was Malmo's story knife. Miraculously it held, and I in turn held on to it, tightly. Slowly I dragged my dangling foot back onto the bridge, and digging the
kitchoa
into the ice, I pulled myself up until I was in a crouching position.

I made it the rest of the way across the bridge in this same crouched-over position, using the
ulu
(after carefully putting away the story knife) and my two clawed feet. When I finally reached the far end I tumbled off onto the snow-covered ground and just lay there, breathing heavily. From the position of the moon I guessed that the journey across the bridge had taken most of the day.

I sat up and looked around. I realized at once that the land was very different from the one I had left behind on the other side of the bridge. First, there was the wind. It was constant, sharp, and insistent. Everything about the place was sharp and biting and bright and hostile. The snow on the ground had the texture of broken glass, brittle and sharp edged. It had been blown by the wind into shallow, undulating ridges that reminded me of Tuki's skin. There were occasional formations of ice that resembled smaller versions of the pinnacles in the ice forest Malmo and I had traveled through, but these looked like actual daggers piercing up from the ground, as though they would cut you if you brushed against them.

I took off my makeshift claws and strapped on my skis. The hard, ridged snow was slick, and I was able to travel swiftly over it. The ice daggers broke under my skis, though I took care to avoid the larger ones. I headed directly north.

As Malmo had told me, there were no animals at all in this land, so I had to carefully conserve my remaining seal meat.

The journey was grueling—the constant knifelike wind nearly drove me mad. My senses went numb. I moved my legs forward and kept my eyes trained on the horizon. After seven days I got my first glimpse of the ice palace. I first spotted it as a piercing glimmer. The late-winter sun had just dawned for its fleeting daily visit, and sent light reflecting off the palace's sheer ice walls and slender glassy towers.

The palace lay directly north of me, and I was still a long, long distance from it, but as I slogged forward, and day followed day, I began to see how vast and splendid it truly was. It stood so tall and shimmering on the snowy plain that it could be seen for miles and miles. One morning, I emerged from my tent after a fitful night's sleep. The glare of the sunlight off the palace was so intense that I only just turned my eyes away in time to avoid doing them damage. From then on I had to be vigilant about averting my eyes, even with my ivory goggles on.

It took many more days to reach the palace. There were few places to hide on the icy plain, but I used all available ridges and hillocks, and the occasional snow cave, to try to keep out of sight of any who might be keeping watch.

When I had come within a quarter mile of my destination, I found a small icy cave, barely as tall as me, in the side of a hill. I dug out the snow inside so I could get deeper into the cave. It faced south, away from the ice palace, and I made myself a snug little camp, sheltered from the relentless wind.

In the cave I thought about how I was going to get inside the glittering palace. Being fairly close, I saw how enormous it was, perhaps three times the size of the tallest church in Andalsnes.

I was down to my last packet of smoked seal meat. I made a small fire, ate a little of the meat, and soon after slept, no closer to a plan than before.

I awoke to the sound of bells.

I
HAD ONCE TOLD
R
OSE
that if she needed me I would go to her, no matter where she was. She needed me, I was sure of it. So I left the reading room and ran all the way to the printing press to find Father. But when I arrived Father was not there, having just left on an errand.

"I must have a ship," I blurted out to Soren.

He could see that I was half out of my mind with worry. He pulled up a chair and calmly beckoned for me to sit. "What has happened, Neddy?"

I poured out the whole tale, of Rose and the white bear and how I felt she was in danger and that I must go to her right away. My sister Sara had told Soren about Rose sometime before, and he was immediately sympathetic.

"Where do you think to go, to find your sister?" he asked, not unreasonably.

"North," I replied without hesitation. Though I had not had a clear view of Rose, I had had a sense of her as being dressed for cold weather in furs and mittens. I knew that feeling may have been just the power of association, given what I had been reading at the time, but nevertheless I was sure she was somewhere in the north.

"North, eh? That covers a lot of territory," Soren said. "Let me make enquiries," he went on. "Your father and I have long thought we ought to do so, but I confess we have both been so wrapped up in this new printing press. At any rate, I understand that the letter you'received from Rose came originally from Tonsberg, via La Rochelle in Fransk. It seems to me that Tonsberg is where we should begin our search, and then move on to La Rochelle."

"That will take too much time," I said impatiently. "I must not delay."

"I understand," replied Soren. "It will only take several days, and that is what we shall need anyway to get a ship outfitted and ready to go."

"Thank you, Soren," I said, clasping his hand in a warm handshake.

Soren waved away my gratitude. "I am tired of being cooped up with this splendid but maddening contraption," he said, gesturing at the printing press. "And I have always wanted an excuse to journey north. It has been little charted and 'twould be a great feather in our cap to do so. Of course, I must be sure to be back in time for my wedding day," he added with a grin.

"Of course," I replied, grinning back.

***

Soren's inquiries proved to be very fruitful, as well as somewhat worrying. We learned that Rose had gone north in a ship—an old
knorr
—headed for Suroy at the top of Njord, but that the
knorr
had not reached its destination. And then Soren's enquiry agent made an extremely lucky discovery in Tonsberg. He found a sailor who had actually been on board Rose's ship headed for Suroy.

The sailor's name was Gest, and he said that the
knorr
had been hit by a mighty storm. He himself had been swept overboard but had managed to survive by grabbing hold of an empty ale cask. He was then rescued by a passing ship that took him back to Tonsberg. He said that his mate, a man named Goran, had drowned but that he did not know what had happened to the captain of the ship and the girl who had been a passenger aboard the
knorr.
His best guess, as it was of those who knew of the storm in question and which way it had blown, was that if the ship had survived the storm, it was likely to have been driven far west and north, maybe as far as Gronland.

I tendered my resignation to Master Eckstrom, telling him that a family emergency had arisen, and said a fond good-bye to Havamal. As a parting gift, my new friend gave me a manuscript, which he had hand copied, with extensive information about Gronland and the people who lived there, as well as some practical details about traveling by ship into frozen waters.

Father, Soren, and I departed two days later on a ship we had renamed
Rose.

T
HE BELLS
I
HEARD
sounded just like the bells on the sleigh of the pale queen. My heart pounding, I quickly got up and moved to the entrance of the cave, cautiously peering out. The sun had not yet risen and the light was murky, but by moonlight I could make out three sleighs. They were stopped about halfway between my cave and the ice palace. The sleighs were crowded with fur-clad figures. I could hear harsh voices—voices like Tuki's and Ur da's—raised in what sounded like anger. Then I noticed a figure bundled in fur moving away from the sleighs, running raggedly in an eastern direction. And several larger figures had jumped out of the sleighs and were in pursuit, shouting. The largest of the pursuers had what looked to be a long whip, and he flicked it at the moving figure. The figure jerked violently backward. The wielder of the whip then reeled in the helpless person, clearly a woman from her screams, dragging her along the ground—the whip wrapped around her waist, her arms pinned to her sides.

Noise began to swell from the sleighs and several other figures jumped out.

Impulsively I ducked back into my cave, then quickly made sure all my gear was safely stowed and left it there. I stealthily began to make my way toward the sleighs. The scene was a chaotic one, with lots of shouting and figures running around in confusion, and the light was still dim. I slipped into the fray, joining a small knot of fur-clad figures who were huddled beside one of the sleighs. I could not see anyone's face, so bundled were they all in fur-lined hoods and scarves. With my own Inuit fur-skins, I blended in easily. A larger figure came striding toward us, speaking in a harsh, guttural voice, and I recognized the language as Tuki's. The figure's face was not covered, and I could see handsome features and ridged, white skin. I kept my eyes down and let myself be herded into the sleigh with the rest of them. The large one with the ridged skin jumped up into the driver's seat, then turned and glared at us menacingly, continuing to speak. A few words sounded faintly familiar, but the voice was so rough that I could not be sure. I thought then of the little dictionary I had made of Tuki's words and regretted that I had not thought to grab it out of my pack before leaving the cave.