“Such a short visit,” Jarl muttered. Then he slipped into sleep.
His youngest daughter watched, fearful, until she saw his chest rise and fall in the rhythm of natural sleep. Then she loosened the hand she still clasped and pulled the blankets over it.
“The physician gave him medicine to ease his pain,” Tordis told her, coming to stand by her side. She put an arm around the lass’s shoulders. “He said it would make him sleep.”
“Will he be all right?”
“Of course he’ll be all right,” Torst said, his voice gruff. His face was as white and strained as everyone else’s, but now he mustered a grin. “He just has to rest. That’s what the doctor said.”
But Hans Peter was frowning. “We should let him sleep,” he said abruptly, picking up his parka and heading out the door.
Frida and Torst followed him, but Tordis and the lass stayed by their father. A few minutes later, an efficient-looking woman with gray braids wrapped around her head and a long apron came in. She smiled at the two girls as she felt their father’s wrist for a pulse.
“Are you the nurse?” Tordis whispered.
The woman nodded and put her finger to her lips.
Exchanging looks, the lass and Tordis slipped out of the room.
Still hushed from the sickroom, the two sisters made their way down the wide staircase in silence. Tordis led the way into a sitting room where the rest of the family was gathered.
The lass sat on a sofa beside Tordis and accepted a cup of tea and a slice of bread and cheese. She surveyed the room, which was luxuriously furnished, and then her family. Tordis looked much the same, in clothes that she had made herself, brightly colored and fancifully cut. Hans Peter was dressed in heavy, simple wool clothing, as usual, but there were no patches or frayed cuffs. Askel, Torst, Frida, and Einar were all in fine city clothes, though somewhat disheveled.
“Will Father be all right?” This time it was Einar who asked the dreaded question.
“Of course he will,” Askeladden said with false heartiness. He took too large a gulp of coffee and choked. Torst pounded him on the back.
“It will be a miracle if your father ever walks again,” Frida said. “He won’t lose his arm, but his hand may be of no use. Praise the skies that Askeladden is able to provide for us. At least one of my children was not a waste,” she sniffed.
“Father has sufficient means to care for himself,” Hans Peter said. He was still clutching the white parka in his hands. With one thumb he rubbed the blue ribbon that ran
down the sleeve, and the lass wondered if he had noticed that it had been taken off and then reattached. “Of course, we had to sacrifice our youngest to an enchantment to get where we are. But I’m sure it was all worth it.” His voice dripped with sarcasm.
“Yes, it was.” The lass put her chin up and spoke the words firmly. “Father will survive this accident. He will be treated by the best doctors and cared for by a professional nurse. Askel and Mother have a comfortable home—”
“You shall have one, too,” Askel interrupted her. “When you come back for good, you can come here.”
She knew how much it cost Askel to be generous, so the lass smiled at her brother, and thanked him.
“If I hadn’t gone with the
isbjørn
,” she continued, “we would all still be huddled in a little cottage with a leaky roof. And when Father had his accident, we would have been caring for him ourselves in front of the kitchen fire.” She finished this with a curt nod, and took a sip of her now-cool tea.
“You’re assuming that Father would have had this accident if the
isbjørn
had never come to us,” Hans Peter said, voicing the lass’s fears. “I’m going to get some sleep.” He stalked out of the room.
The lass hurried after him, catching her brother’s sleeve as he reached the bottom of the staircase. “Hans Peter,” she said in a low voice, “if you know something
about this enchantment that would help me, I would very much like to hear it.”
“Be careful. Wait out your year. Come home,” he said. He shrugged out of her grip and took the stairs two at a time.
She followed more slowly, allowing Tordis to catch up to her. Upstairs, the lass found a bedchamber had been prepared by one of Askel’s numerous servants. She couldn’t help but notice that it was much smaller than her bedroom at home—the ice palace, rather. There was no private washroom, only a chamber pot and a washbasin with a ewer of hot water beside it. She did a quick wash, pulled out a clean shift, and climbed into bed.
She told herself that she had trouble getting to sleep because this bed was narrower than she was used to. The sheets were coarser, and the furniture made different shadows.
She refused to admit to herself that she was waiting for a familiar weight to settle itself in the bed next to her. For familiar breath to blow softly against her cheek. In the end she made Rollo get in the bed, where he proceeded to snore and kick and keep her awake until dawn, when she finally gave up and got dressed.
Three days passed in a blur. The lass spent most of each day in her father’s room, holding his good hand and talking to him. She “invented” stories about creatures called fauns and salamanders and selkies that inhabited a fantastical palace of ice. She described books she had read in the palace library. She said she was trying to teach herself a new language, but when he asked what it was, she hastily said, “Fransk.” She didn’t want him to know that she was learning troll.
She sent Einar to the nearest bookstore to buy a stack of popular novels, and she and Tordis took turns reading to Jarl. They left his side only when the nurse changed his bandages or bathed him, and even then it was a wrench for the lass to be parted from her father.
The day after her arrival, Hans Peter hitched up the reindeer and returned to their old cottage. Everyone had begged him to stay, but he refused. He said that he had things to do (“Ha!” was Frida’s response to this), and that Jorunn would be frantic with worry.
“I wish I had brought my little book, so we could have
written to her,” the lass said, stroking the nose of the white-faced doe while Hans Peter put his small bundle of clothes and a large hamper of food into the wagon. “Then you could have stayed.”
“I wouldn’t have stayed anyway,” he said tersely.
“I need to talk to you,” she insisted. She had been insisting for the past day and a half. She wanted to talk to Hans Peter, alone, and ask him about the ice palace and the enchantment.
“No, you don’t,” Hans Peter said. Then he sighed and sat down on the driver’s seat. “All right, dear little lassie, listen well. You are right: I
was
there. I have seen the great snow plain and the palace of ice. I know Erasmus the faun, and the salamanders that make such fine meals. But I also know the mistress of that house, and the extent of her designs on those who dwell within. Which is why I say to you: be careful, wait out your year, and come home.”
“But I think that I can—”
“Be careful. Wait out your year. Come home,” he repeated. He gathered up the reins and released the brake on the front left wheel. “You can keep the parka for now, but I would like it back when you return.”
He shook the reins and whistled, and the lass hurried out of the way as the reindeer set off. Hans Peter looked back briefly when he reached the end of the street, and waved. His hair shone almost completely white in the sun, making him look like an old, old man.
“Well!” Frida came down the steps and glared after the wagon. “Is he gone, then? And not even a good-bye to his mother, or the brother whose hospitality he took advantage of?”
Her mother’s shrewish voice set the lass’s teeth on edge. “You know that Hans Peter isn’t much for goodbyes. And neither is Askel. It would have only embarrassed them both.”
Her mother merely sniffed. “I’m going back inside. It’s chill out.”
All too soon the end of her visit came, and the lass found herself packing her knapsack one morning. Askel said that he would drive her outside of the city to meet the
isbjørn
at dusk, but Jarl was taking a nap and no one else was around, so she began to stow her things. She wore a pretty blue dress for now, but had left out her trousers, a sweater, and the parka to change into later.
There was a knock at the door. “Pika? It’s me,” Tordis said, sticking her head into the room. “Anxious to go?”
The lass picked up her hairbrush and smiled at her sister. “No,” she said. “I just didn’t want to waste my last hour with Father by having to pack.”
“Can’t you stay longer?”
The lass made a face. “I promised that I would go back today. The longer I stay, the longer my year will be.”
Tordis stared at her. “What do you mean?”
“I have to stay with the bear for a year and a day. Since
I’ve been here for five days, that means I have to stay five days longer at the
isbjørn
’s palace.”
“Is everything really . . . all right . . . there?”
Now the lass laughed. “I live in a palace with a giant
isbjørn
,” she reminded her sister. “It’s as ‘all right’ as it could be.” She shook her head, laughing, as she continued to pack. “And it will be a relief to get away from Mother,” she muttered, half to herself.
“Mother is much happier now, you know,” Tordis said.
“Oh, I’m sure. But her happiness seems to have made her rather nosy,” the lass replied. “She’s been poking and prying all week. ‘What do you eat? How many servants are there? Does the bear have courtiers?’ “ She pitched her voice higher in imitation of Frida.
It was Tordis’s turn to laugh. “That’s her exactly,” she said. “But it’s not like you have anything to hide,” she continued. Then her gaze sharpened on the lass, who had lowered her eyes. “Do you?”
“N-no.”
Tordis came around the bed and put her arm around the lass. “What’s bothering you, little sister?”
“Nothing,” the lass said, folding and refolding a shift. The lie sounded obvious even to her ears.
“Nothing?”
“It’s just that—” The lass brought herself up short.
“It’s just that what?”
Two voices warred in the lass’s head. One was the voice
of the white bear, warning her not to tell any “secrets.” The other voice was her own, almost crying with loneliness as her sister embraced her. She enjoyed the bear’s company, but there was a vast difference between being with him and being with another human, especially one of her sisters.
“It’s that . . .” She still hesitated, not sure how to begin. “Well, don’t tell Mother or Father, but every night someone gets into bed with me,” she said in one breath.
“Someone gets into bed with you? Who?” Tordis’s brows drew together.
“I don’t know.” The lass shrugged. “I can never find a candle at night. It’s a huge bed, and . . . they just get in on the other side and go to sleep. They’re gone in the morning.”
“They?”
“Um, it? I can’t see. . . .”
Tordis put her free hand to her throat in dismay. “Is this thing that’s sleeping with you human?”
“I think so.”
“How can you be sure?”
The lass blushed. “I felt his head,” she muttered.
“It’s a man?” Tordis’s eyes narrowed.
The lass didn’t have to speak. Her flaming cheeks said it all.
“A strange man is lying beside you every night? You poor child!” Tordis clucked her tongue. “Just because you think it’s a man doesn’t mean that it really is, you know.”
The lass pulled away to get a better look at Tordis’s face. “I don’t understand.”
“This is an enchanted palace,” her sister pointed out. “This . . . man . . . who shares your bed may be under an enchantment as well. It could be a horrible troll, who
feels
human only to lure you into a sense of security.”
“I really don’t think so.” And the lass didn’t. There was something so . . . solid and ordinary about her nightly visitor. Compared to the minotaurus in the kitchen, he was almost boring.
“What if this whatever-it-is is playing some game with you? Trying to convince you that it’s innocent, so you’ll forget it’s even there?”
“But what good would that do?”
“Living as deep in the forest as I do, I’ve heard some horrible stories,” Tordis said with solemn certainty. “You don’t know what this creature could do to you.”
“I don’t
feel
threatened,” the lass argued.
Tordis just shook her head. “That doesn’t matter. You must look at this creature in good light, to make sure that it is not some hideous monster.”
“But I told you: I can’t ever find any candles at night, and the fire goes out.”
Tordis tapped her lips, then went over to a candelabrum on the dresser. The lass had not burned any of those particular candles because they were the herb-scented kind that made her sneeze. Her sister took a small
pair of scissors from the pocket of her apron and cut off the top of one. She handed the stub to the lass along with a box of matches she took from another pocket.
“Take these and look at this monster that shares your bed,” Tordis advised her. “Our priest says that a candle made in a Christian home can banish any illusion. It’s the only way you may be sure that you are safe.”
“And if I’m not?” The lass felt an icy trickle down her spine.
“Do what you think best: lock yourself away at night, or escape the palace and come home.” Tordis pressed the little box and the short bit of candle into the lass’s hands. “Have it with you always. Promise me.”
“All right, I will,” the lass said, more to reassure Tordis than anything else. She took the proffered items and put them into the bodice of her gown while Tordis watched. The herbs in the candle tickled her nose, and she itched where it rested against her skin. She wiped her fingers surreptitiously on one of her shifts as she packed the last away.
“I’ll just go and see if Father is awake yet,” she said, edging around the bed. She regretted saying anything now.
Troubled, the lass went to spend the last few precious hours with her father. She could not concentrate on the novel they were hurrying to finish, and she found that the candle itched even worse as her skin warmed the wax. By the time she took leave of her family she was cross, tired, and breaking out in a rash.