The lass sank back down into her chair. She watched the pool of ink seep into the carpet. Her troll dictionary was on the edge of the puddle—actually, it was
in
the puddle now—but she didn’t care. Erasmus was dead. Because she had asked him questions. And he had answered. He was six hundred years old. Had been. But now he was dead.
She
had taken him away.
“The troll princess,” the lass said. Then she started to cry. Once she started she couldn’t stop, and when Rollo found her a few minutes later, she was down on the floor in the puddle of ink, eyes swollen and nose streaming,
sobbing and pounding her fists into the cushion of the chair.
“Are you all right?” Rollo hopped around the black mess, pushing his nose into the lass’s shoulders and arms, whatever he could reach without getting his clean paws in the black mess. “What’s wrong?”
“Erasmus is dead! He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead! Because he talked to me,
she
killed him!” The lass howled and beat the cushion with even greater ferocity.
“Who killed him?” The wolf’s hackles rose.
“She did, she did, that troll, that troll . . . hag!” The lass picked up the fallen inkpot, now mostly empty, and hurled it at the window. It smashed into the ice, leaving a spiderweb of cracks before falling to the floor with a
thunk
.
Rollo breathed heavily on his mistress’s hair and then turned and ran out of the room. The lass thought that she had finally chased away her last friend, and began to cry even harder. Hans Peter wasn’t talking to her; Erasmus was dead; Rollo had abandoned her. Who was left?
The great white
isbjørn
’s paws were so large and soft that he made no noise entering the room. He stepped right into the inkstain and laid his huge head on top of the lass’s. The low rumbling of his voice vibrated her skull.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’ll kill her,” the lass hiccupped.
“Who?”
“You know who. The troll princess, the one who killed Erasmus’s Narella. And now Erasmus. I’ll kill her.” She raked her nails down the cushion of the chair, snagging the fine silken embroidery.
Another rumble from deep in the bear’s throat. He sat back and the lass leaned against his warm, furry torso. Even though she’d thought her tears had dried, a new wave swept over her, and she wept into the bear’s soft fur for a long time.
“Better?” He waited until the last sob faded away and she had pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket to mop up her face.
“I suppose. I still want to kill her.”
The bear growled. It rattled the lass’s bones and made Rollo whine.
“You shouldn’t even know she exists,” the bear warned the girl. “Don’t speak of her again. Don’t ask questions; don’t threaten her. Soon the year will be over.”
“That’s what Hans Peter says,” the lass snapped, pushing away from the bear’s embrace. “Wait and be careful, don’t do anything, just wait and then go home. Well, I can’t! Erasmus was kind to me, and now he’s dead.”
“Asking more questions won’t bring him back. It can only make things worse,” the
isbjørn
warned.
“How could things be any worse?” the lass raged. She
stomped around the library, ripping books off the shelves and throwing them to the floor. “My brother’s life is ruined. Erasmus is dead. All the servants, their lives were ruined by her. Your life, my life. The girl whose
bunader
I found, she’s probably dead, too! There has to be some way to fight
her
.”
“No, there is no way. We can only wait, and see, and hope.” The bear was watching her rant with an uneasy expression.
“What does that mean?”
“I can’t tell you,” he said.
She rounded on him. “You!” She pointed a shaking finger at his broad white face. “You’re afraid of her!”
“Of course I am,” he shouted, getting to his feet. “Do you know what she’s—” His words cut off abruptly. He stood there, silent, for a moment, and then snarled in frustration. “I can’t—if you had any sense, you would fear her, too!” He came over to stand nose to nose with the lass. On all fours, he was as tall as the lass standing upright. “Believe me: things can be much, much worse. She can make you regret you were ever born.” And then he left.
The lass plucked a globe of the world inlaid with precious stones from a table and hurled it through the already cracked window. The ice pane made a creaking sound as it broke, and the globe hurtled through the air like a falling star, to smash on the jagged ice at the foot of the palace walls.
The next day, the salamanders tearfully told the lass that Mrs. Grey was gone.
She
had come in the night and taken her away.
The lass didn’t leave her rooms for two weeks.
After Mrs. Grey was taken, the lass did as her brother and the
isbjørn
had pleaded. She stopped asking questions. She stopped begging Hans Peter for information. Having been rejected by her mother at birth, the lass wasn’t all that frightened by the threat that she would regret she had been born. But she was sickened by the thought that Erasmus and Mrs. Grey had suffered because of her.
And yet the lass couldn’t just sit there, day after day, idle. She asked Fiona if she couldn’t have some new cloth to sew clothes for herself. She refused to wear the troll gowns, and she had ruined her best skirt by kneeling in the puddle of ink. Tova’s clothes (for she had decided that they were Tova’s) would fit her with a little alteration, but somehow it seemed sacrilegious. Fiona nodded, and the next day the sitting room was filled with bolts of silk and velvet, fine linen, and spools of silk thread.
With a self-deprecating laugh, the lass made herself the kind of clothing she was used to, rather than the kind she had been wearing. Fiona removed the troll gowns, and the wardrobe slowly filled with long bell-shaped skirts,
tight vests, and shifts with gathered sleeves such as any farmgirl of the North would wear. Not that the farmgirls of the North had ever worn skirts of rich blue velvet and vests of peacock green satin.
Sewing kept the lass’s hands busy, and even her mouth. When she sewed, she pursed her lips, or chewed them, or stuck her tongue out. Her siblings had always made fun of her for this, but no matter how she tried she couldn’t break the habit. She decided that it was a good thing, now, for it prevented her from asking questions. But her rage over the troll princess caused her fingers to fumble or move too fast. She sliced through the fabric with reckless abandon and angrily threw great lengths of cloth into the fire when she couldn’t get the seams straight.
Once she was done with the new wardrobe, she found her resolution not to ask questions waning. The trouble was that servants avoided her now, and so did the
isbjørn,
except for dinnertime. Even the salamanders, those chatty little cooks who had enlivened her early days in the palace, were monosyllabic when she visited the kitchens.
The lass had searched the palace top to bottom already. But now she did it again, determined to gather information without endangering anyone else. She turned the strange rooms upside down, rummaging in piles of carding combs, overturning butter churns, and sorting through spindles, spinning wheels, and looms. She even managed to
push over every anvil in a room full of metal-working tools, to see if there was anything written or carved underneath, but there was nothing.
She did ask the
isbjørn
about the rooms full of household tools. She didn’t think it could hurt, just to ask why there was a room in a palace full of old butter churns.
He shook his head, equally puzzled, and told her that there was just something about the tools that attracted
them
. He didn’t need to say which “them” he meant. The lass knew: trolls. The silent, never-seen rulers of this strange kingdom of barren ice.
“It’s like Rolf Simonson’s spoon,” Rollo said, looking up from his dinner.
The lass and the
isbjørn
exchanged confused looks.
“Rolf Simonson’s Fransk silver spoon,” Rollo explained. “You remember: it sat on the mantelpiece, and everyone admired it, but no one actually ate with it, because it was foreign.”
“Oh, of course!” The lass nodded. “One of his sons traded two reindeer for it, in Christiania. It was very elegant.” She wrinkled her nose and looked at the spoon she was eating with. “Although not as fine as this.”
“Hmm,” the
isbjørn
rumbled. “Perhaps Rollo is correct. Perhaps such things attract
them
because they are foreign.”
Fiona the selkie was serving dinner during this discussion. She looked sharply from the bear to the girl as they talked, and cringed when the bear spoke of “them.” The lass
had never seen the tall, proud seal-woman cringe before. As she carried out the dinner tray, she did it awkwardly one-handed; her other hand was curled into a strange sign that she pressed to her side as though to ward off evil spirits. The bear and the lass both observed this, but neither said anything about it. It was almost embarrassing to see Fiona behave in such a way.
The next morning, the lass woke at dawn to find Fiona hovering over her. The selkie grimaced and frowned in the pale morning light. The lass gave a shriek and slid to the other side of the bed. Her nighttime companion was gone, but the bed was still warm where he had lain.
“What is it?”
More grimacing and frowning from the selkie.
“Oh, just speak,” the lass said with impatience, recovering from her surprise. “I don’t yearn for your beauty or want to marry you. What on earth are you doing?”
As though summoning all her strength, the selkie drew herself up to her full height, opened her mouth, and then blew out all her breath in a gust. Sucking in another breath, she finally spoke.
“You foolish little girl,” she snarled. “What do you think you’re playing at? Do you want to kill us all?”
“I’m only trying to help!”
“But you’re
not
helping! None of you has ever helped! You poke your little button noses into things that don’t concern you, or you cry and whine and mope about, but
you
never
help! Then it all explodes in your rosy little faces and you run away home and the masters are forced to go away with
her
.”
“You mean the troll princess? And what masters? The
isbjørner
?”
The selkie gave a scream of rage. “Stop asking questions! How many of us must die to satisfy your stupid curiosity? All you have to do is wait out the year. . . . Is that too much to ask?”
“Yes!” the lass shouted. “It is too much!” Her outburst startled Fiona into silence once more. “Aren’t you a prisoner here? Don’t you want someone to free you?”
“You can’t help me; you’re just a silly human girl!”
“But I want to try!”
Clapping her hands to her ears, Fiona shook her head and left the room, slamming the door behind her.
When Rollo came cautiously into the room after the selkie’s dramatic exit, he found his mistress pounding a pillow ferociously. He went and got the
isbjørn
again, who growled over Fiona’s harsh words and patted the lass heavily on the back.
The next day the minotaurus, Garth, brought the lass’s breakfast tray. The lass looked at him curiously, said good morning, and received a grunt in reply. She went down to the kitchen after she got dressed and asked the salamanders if there was anything new with the staff. They didn’t answer her. Nor did the brownie and pixie she found in
the scullery. None of them would meet her eyes. None of them would talk to her.
She went and found the
isbjørn
. He was in a room full of knitting needles and small belt looms. He was holding a belt loom up to a window and squinting at it. When he saw the lass, he dropped it with a clatter.
“Fiona is gone,” he said, confirming the lass’s fears.
“But why?” She clenched her fists and shook them at him. “She yelled at me, but that was all! Was that so terrible? Why did you . . . ?”
She hadn’t thought of it until the words were out of her mouth, but when they burst into the air she realized what was really bothering her. No one beside the
isbjørn
could have known that Fiona had shouted at her, unless Fiona had told the other servants. The bear had been angry at Fiona for hurting the lass’s feelings, but Fiona hadn’t told her anything that would have gotten her into trouble with the troll princess, as far as the lass could tell. So had it been the
isbjørn
who told the troll what the selkie had done?
“She was under orders not to talk to you,” the bear rumbled. “Not my orders, either. I said no word about her shouting.”
“Then who? Garth?”
“Nothing happens within these walls that
she
does not know about. I’m sorry. Truly sorry. I liked Fiona and her pouts.”
“I liked Erasmus and Mrs. Grey, too,” the lass sniffed.
To her annoyance, she was crying. It felt like all she did lately was cry or sew. Sometimes both.
“So did I.”
They sat together for a while in silence. Then they both went down to the kitchen. The salamanders didn’t speak, but they did give them cake and cider. Garth and the others came in, and they all raised a glass in a wordless toast to Fiona and Mrs. Grey and Erasmus.
That night Rollo went out and mourned them in his own way, howling at the moon for hours. The lass lay in her bed and listened to the muffled sounds of his howls coming through the ice-paned window.
The lass did not tell Hans Peter what had happened. His responses to her letters in the blank book were always terse, and she sensed that he was angry with her for being so curious and endangering the servants. She learned that her father was doing well, and could now walk with the aid of a crutch. The king’s physician had recommended lightly exercising the injured leg and arm, to strengthen them.
And then there was a puzzling letter from Tordis. Well, it was puzzling to Jorunn, at least. She reported to the lass via the magic book that Tordis wanted to know, urgently, if the lass had done what she had asked and used you-know-what to look at you-know-who.
I am completely at a loss,
Jorunn wrote.
But Tordis said that you would understand. She wants to know at once. As soon as you write to me, I am to write to her.