West

by Edith Pattou

  I breathed, as deeply and deliberately as I could, and my thoughts cleared a little. For now, anyway, I was alive. And I would stay alive. I concentrated my mind on remembering what Ben had told us about surviving an avalanche.

  Fortunately my hands had stayed in front of me, and I was able to wiggle them close to my face, cupping my mittened palms in front of my mouth, creating a pocket of air. Ben had warned that my exhaled breath would melt the snow around my face, which would quickly refreeze, creating a barrier of ice. He also said that one should move slowly and methodically, to conserve energy.

  I spat out a little saliva and was relieved when it ran down my chin instead of up my nose, which meant that I had landed right side up.

  I scooped out the snow around my face to create a larger opening and started to dig upward, praying that indeed I was going up, toward the surface. I had a sense of light above me, though was worried I was confusing it with my dream, but it gave me hope that I wasn’t buried too deeply.

  I kept punching my hand through the snow above my head. My breathing grew short, and I slowed down. I didn’t want to use up the little bit of air I had. Moving slowly, I pressed my hand up and felt the snow loosen, letting my fingers wiggle freely. I was an arm’s length from the surface!

  I felt a rush of relief. I could do this, I told myself. Even though I felt as if I was encased in stone, I could dig my way out.

  Ever since I was a little girl, people always said that I was afraid of nothing, and in fact Mother said many times my fearlessness would be the death of both of us. Neddy continually berated me for my foolhardy bravado. Even Sib had called me misneachail, a nickname that in her language meant “without fear.” But it was not true, not entirely. There was one thing that terrified me. And this was it. Being trapped in a small place where I could not breathe. And it wasn’t because of the prophecy of the skjebne-soke. I only learned about that when I was older. But I wondered if somehow I had always known it. At any rate, being confined in a tiny space was the one thing that gave me nightmares and made my breath go short.

  I needed my breath now, more than I had ever needed it before. I could not panic and remove the little air I had left. If I let terror overtake me, I would die.

  I thought fiercely of Winn and Estelle. And even of Charles, though he did not know who I was and perhaps never would. It didn’t matter. For him and for our children, I would live.

  And so I dug. Holding off the fear with every fiber of my being, I dug and I dug. Slowly, sometimes dislodging only a few granules of snow, I kept chipping and scraping. The moments crawled, and each time I moved my hand, I believed that breath would be my last.

  But slowly, agonizingly slowly, the snow above me loosened and shifted, and the light grew brighter. Finally I had created a tunnel to the surface and could breathe more freely.

  I stopped for a while to recover my strength. The prospect of extricating my entire body from the rocklike snow that enveloped me seemed almost impossible, but I believed I could do it.

  It must have taken me several hours or more to dig myself out of that tomb, but painstakingly, pausing often, I was finally able to pull myself out of the snow.

  I lay there a moment, feeling both an overwhelming sense of being alive, but at the same time knowing how close I still was to dying. I had to find shelter and a way to light a fire, or I would freeze to death. And I still had to dig my pack and sword and bedroll out of the place that might have been my grave. It took a long time, perhaps an hour, and by the time I finished, I could not feel my fingers and toes, and I feared I might lose one or more to what Ben had called blackflesh.

  I spotted a rocky ledge with a slight overhang, and brushing away snow, I untied the last few pieces of wood that were strapped to the bottom of my pack. Using that long-ago flint with fingers that barely could move, I was able to start a small fire.

  The pain that shot through my fingers and toes as they warmed was unbearable, but I gritted my teeth and rubbed and rubbed until finally the pain eased and warmth tingled back into my hands and feet.

  I looked around to get my bearings and immediately thought of Charles. All I could see was snow. I traced the path of the avalanche with my eyes. I could see I was not at the bottom of it, but had somehow, miraculously, been swept to the side less than halfway down. I did not recognize the terrain at first, but then spotted a few familiar markers I had noticed on our climb up the mountain.

  Gazing up, I could see the peak of Mont Blanc. I had lost a lot of ground, but not as much as I might have.

  Where was Charles? Had he survived? He’d gone ahead of me, but had he been swept past me, down to the bottom of the mountain?

  I tried calling out his name. The eerie, echoing sound in all that silent whiteness unnerved me. I listened closely, but there was no answering call.

  I turned again to my fire, rubbing my hands. Then I leaned back against the rocky surface behind me. We had made a promise to go on without the other. But how could I? What if my white bear was hurt? I couldn’t just leave him.

  As I sat there, my thoughts whirling around in my head, I noticed something odd about the surface of the cliff face to my right. It was mostly covered with snow, but there were a few spots that were bare, and the rock surface looked strangely smooth. I reached over and brushed away more snow. I discovered that a large area was in fact smooth, or mostly smooth, because I also saw there were carvings on the surface. My heart quickening, I pushed more snow away and saw scrollwork etched into what looked to be greenish marble, and as I dug and swept off the snow, I realized I was looking at the rectangular shape of a doorway. And there was a small handle that gleamed gold.

  I reached for it, holding my breath, and turned. It didn’t move at first, but when I used more force, it gave a little and I heard a clicking sound. However, when I pulled the door toward me, it did not budge. So I used my dagger, chipping away at the ice and snow encrusted in the door’s edges.

  After a while, I tried the handle again and this time felt the door give a little. Pulling on the handle and prying with the blade of my knife where it still stuck, I finally got the door open, at least enough so I could squeeze through.

  At first it seemed dark inside, especially in contrast to the sun’s glare off the white snow outside. But as my eyes adjusted, I became aware of a dim yellowish light, the source of which I could not see, yet it was enough to reveal a small hallway that led to the base of a stairway, a steep staircase that climbed straight up into the mountain.

  I hesitated, breathing deeply. I turned and peered back out through the door opening, at the vast whiteness stretching down, the path of the avalanche. We had made a promise to go on, and in that moment I made up my mind.

  First I went back to my fire and melted enough snow to fill two skin bags full of water, then I completely doused the fire with snow. I gathered my pack, sword, and bedroll.

  I went through the door again and strode up to the stairway. I set my foot on the first step. The stairs were made of polished ivory marble with veins of white swirling through it. And I began to climb, slowly and steadily, my shoes with their metal spikes making a ringing sound on the marble steps.

  White Bear

  AS I ROUNDED THE RIDGE, I saw it clearly. A door. It was large and grand, fashioned of some gleaming white material I didn’t recognize. From a distance, it would look indistinguishable from the side of the mountain face. But it was a door. I was about to turn back to tell Nyamh what I’d found when I heard the roaring sound. I spun and saw the wall of white hurtling toward me. I had just enough time to grab the handle of the door, open it, and slip through before the onslaught of snow hit.

  The door slammed shut, and I could hear the avalanche pounding against it. For I knew that was what it was, an avalanche. I thought desperately of Nyamh, hoping she’d heard it coming and found a safe place to shelter.

  The pounding went on and on, until finally it stopped. I went to the door and pushed, but it was shut fast, didn’t move even a f
raction of an inch. I pictured the snow piled up against it and knew it was futile to try anymore.

  What had happened to Nyamh? Was she perhaps lying hurt or broken under that deluge of snow? I closed my eyes, leaning my forehead against the door. I had to believe she was alive, that she didn’t need my help. My bairn, my son, was somewhere in this palace and I had to find him. We had agreed to go on if we were separated, and I hoped I was doing the right thing.

  I turned and took stock of where I was. It appeared to be the entry hall of a grand dwelling, most likely a palace, though it was very different from the palaces I had lived in as a child in Fransk.

  This was loftier, more ornate. And it was full of light. There seemed to be large windows at the front and top of the hall that let in the sun. All the surfaces were either white or gold, so the effect was almost blinding.

  There was a grand stairway that curved up high to the next level, but somehow I thought it didn’t seem wise to enter the palace that way. There were doorways to both the right and left of the bottom of the stairway so I went to one and opened it. It led me into a hallway, which I followed.

  At the end of the hall was another door, and when I opened it, found myself in a large kitchen.

  I started to move through it, but suddenly became aware of movement. There were two people, one on either side of me, though I could see at once they were not human. They had white ridged skin like the man who had visited me once in the underground labyrinth. I knew now they were trolls.

  One held a large kitchen knife and seemed to be a girl, and the other was a boy who held nothing. But it was he who lunged at me first, his hands closing around my throat. It happened so fast I had no time to react or draw my sword. I reached up and tried to pull his hands away.

  He was strong, though, stronger than me, and I felt my breath going. All of a sudden, I was filled with anger, a deep, burning rage, and a surge of energy coursed through my body.

  I put my two hands between his grasping ones, and with a roar, I broke them apart. He let out a cry, and I pushed him away. He fell back and I followed, picking him up and throwing him at the wall. I didn’t know where all this astonishing strength was coming from. It felt primitive, like it was emerging from somewhere deep inside me. He hit the wall with a thud and crumpled to the ground. And he didn’t move again.

  The girl with the knife came at me then, and this time I tried to draw my sword. But it stuck in the scabbard. I let out a curse, dodging away from her blade.

  She laughed, and I felt the fierce rage again and lunged at her, grabbing her by the legs and tossing her into the air. The knife dropped to the floor with a clang, and she followed, hitting her head hard on the white marble. She too lay unmoving.

  I stood there, panting, and gazed in amazement at their two still bodies. I was confused by what had just happened. It was as if some buried part of me had exploded up and out of me.

  It must have been my white-bear self. The instinctual drive for survival in a violent, perilous world.

  I was so lost in the wonder of it that I didn’t see the third troll who had snuck up behind me, with a large cast-iron pan in his hand. I turned to see him swinging it at my head and then I knew no more.

  Estelle

  AFTER LOCKING ME IN MY ROOM, Urda did not come back for a long time. Not with food and not even to change Winn’s cloths. I had to do it myself, and he was being fussy, so it was très désagréable.

  Winn and I both grew very hungry as well. He had long since finished the last cup of the milky drink Urda brought him. I put the rest of the apple cider in the cup, and he seemed to like it. I finished off all the crusts of bread and leftovers from the last meal, but it did little to ease my hunger pangs. At least the water jug was half full.

  In spite of the apple cider, Winn continued to be fussy, and I wondered if that tiny tooth was finally bothering him. I urged the teething ring on him, but he kept throwing it at me.

  Finally I got him settled down, and he fell asleep in his cradle.

  I felt out of sorts, angry at Urda, who had been nice, bringing gifts and playing echecs, and then mean, dragging me back to the room and locking me in.

  You must be like Rose, I told myself. You must figure out how to escape. Maybe there was some way to pry open the lock. I had heard of lock-pickers who broke into people’s homes and stole things. I looked all around the room for something I could use. My eye fell on the knife and fork on the table, left over from my last meal.

  I took the knife over to the door and knelt down. The blade, which was tapered, fit in the keyhole perfectly, and I tried wiggling it around. I had no idea how the lock worked, so I pulled the knife back out and peered into the keyhole. It made no sense to me, but maybe if I poked around long enough, something would work.

  Rose

  THE AIR INSIDE THE TOWER of marble steps was cold, but not as cold as outside. And it was thin, but not quite as thin. The polished surface of the steps was slippery, and I decided to remove the spikes from my boots, realizing they would do me no good on this surface. The walls were made of the same ivory marble, and even in the dim light, there was a glare, like the sun on an expanse of white snow.

  At first I told myself this was much easier than climbing a mountain of snow and ice. A stairway. No ledges to haul yourself up. No crevasses to sound. No bitter wind tearing at your skin or ice pelting your face.

  But I also knew that when things looked easy, they often turned out to be the opposite. I thought back to the time I was in the castle in the mountain and how I had come to the realization that magic lets you skip over things, in this case dangerous things like crevasses and snow thunder, but you also missed other things like the impossible blue of the sky hanging over undulating white waves of mountains stretching into the distance, or seeing a line of icicles hanging from a jutting ledge glittering in the sun’s rays. There was no such variety here in the everlasting stairwell. Just gleaming marble all around me.

  And I also knew that this stairway could well be a trap.

  It didn’t matter, though. If Winn and Estelle were at the top of this tower, and I believed with a certainty that surprised me that they were, then I must climb these stairs.

  So I climbed. And I climbed. My legs began to ache, and a stitch developed in my side. My head pounded. And still I climbed. Dizziness feathered red at the sides of my eyesight, and my ears buzzed.

  It is the thin air sickness, I reminded myself, and stopped to drink deeply from my skin bag. I chewed some dried rabbit meat.

  I began to climb again. Up and up. Surely the mountain is not this high, I thought dully, as the stitch in my side returned and I had to labor for every breath. There were pins and needles stabbing my feet and hands. I grew drowsy.

  Maybe if I just curled up on the marble steps and took a little rest, I said to myself. But I shook my head, fighting off the drowsiness.

  The walls pressed in on me. I longed to be back out on the outside of the mountain, with the crisp cold and blue sky. I began to calculate the time I had spent coming up and wondered if I could make it back to the bottom if I tried. I wasn’t sure.

  I remembered vividly the days I had spent in the castle in the mountain, slowly dying of homesickness and despair. I began to feel as though I had been in this tower walking up these stairs as long as I had been trapped in that castle. But in the castle in the mountain, I had been with the white bear, my white bear. Who, even if he had survived the avalanche, was as good as dead to me. He did not know me and never would. And suddenly I was engulfed in grief. Tears rolled down my cheeks.

  I stopped again, wiped my face deliberately, and forced myself to drink from my skin bag. I would think only of the stairs that still loomed above me. And of Winn.

  Estelle

  MY KNEES HURT AND MY FINGERS were numb and I had made no progress on getting the lock to budge. I stood up stiffly, taking a deep breath. I crossed to the table and sat down, pouring myself a small amount of the water from the jug, saving some for W
inn.

  He had almost finished the apple juice I gave him, but he still slept peacefully.

  How I wished I had that ring of Urda’s keys, the one she always carried at her waist.

  I stared at the echecs set in a daze, my stomach rumbling.

  “I must be brave like Rose,” I said, but tears came to my eyes.

  Maybe, I told myself, Rose will come rescue me and Winn, the way she rescued the white bear.

  Rose

  IT DIDN’T SEEM POSSIBLE that a stairway should rise so high. I felt as if by now I could have climbed into the highest reaches of the sky and be walking among the stars.

  But instead of stars, black spots dappled my vision, along with the red feathers, and I had to keep blinking them away. The pain in my side had become almost unbearable. I had to take each step slowly, crouched over. My feet slipped frequently on the polished marble.

  So much for this being the easy way up the mountain, I thought grimly.

  But worst of all was a nearly overwhelming sense of dread that clenched at my insides. It was like I could feel evil pulsing above me, around me, threatening my reason. I remembered kentta murha, the killing fields in Niflheim, and all the frozen, twisted bodies of discarded softskins. And I thought of the Blood Rain and of the very earth buckling, killing hundreds, even thousands of innocent people. Could the Troll Queen really be capable of such powerful and monstrous magic? I knew she could. And here I was stumbling up a cursed flight of marble steps to meet her.

  The last time I had faced her, all I had done was wash a shirt. It now seemed like sheer dumb luck and the bravery of the young troll Tuki that had made me able to defeat the Troll Queen and rescue Charles. I had a strong feeling that it was going to take much more than washing a shirt to best her this time.

  All I had was a sword I barely knew how to use and my love for Winn and Estelle and my white bear. It would have to be enough.