North Child

by Edith Pattou

  They started me on easy tasks, but it was not long before I found myself being set before a small loom. And when they saw what I could do on that loom, I was soon moved to a larger one. It was nearly as splendid as the one in the castle had been. I was presented with a fine array of materials – thread and yarn of the most delicate and richest texture, in colours that dazzled the eye. Apparently, perhaps because of all the white that surrounded them, the trolls had a fondness for bright colours, at least when it came to dressing up. And there were many orders for fine gowns and vestments. Because of the wedding feast.

  Although I hated the creatures who had ruined the lives of their countless human slaves, it did not cross my mind to do anything but my best work for the trolls. I had no plan yet, but I felt that doing good work might somehow help me rescue the white bear.

  It was not until I learned that the wedding feast was only a fortnight away that I began to make plans. And by then I had found Tuki.

  Urda has become troublesome. She blames me for Tuki’s odd behaviour of late. To me his actions seem harmless; nevertheless, it worries her. He has taken to shunning all company, preferring to be by himself, playing with his little toys. Or else he is to be found hanging about the softskin servants. I do not know why he does this, for they cannot talk to him, but apparently he is content merely to watch them. It is clear he was contaminated by associating with the softskin girl at the castle in the green lands. I may have to eliminate him. In the meantime I need to find a way to mollify Urda.

  Though it is of little matter to me whether or not Urda is happy, she has many friends, and I prefer allies at this time rather than enemies. The wedding feast is very soon now, and there is still much to be done. Nothing must go wrong.

  Tuki and I first encountered each other in a remote hallway in one of the outer buildings, not far from the weaving room. I was very lucky that there was no one nearby when we met, otherwise I would certainly have been exposed and all would have been lost.

  When he saw me for the first time, Tuki gave a shrill, keening cry, and then a great toothy smile spread over his face. “Rose,” he said happily.

  “Tuki,” I responded softly, and, looking around uneasily, placed a finger to my lips. He understood, mimicking me with a finger to his own lips, and we had a hurried, whispered exchange there in the hallway. My knowledge of the troll language was severely put to the test, but somehow, with a combination of pantomime and words, I was able to arrange a meeting with Tuki late the next evening in the weaving room. I was fairly confident that I would be alone then but impressed on Tuki that he must come into the room only if he saw I was the only one there.

  I had become a favourite of sorts with the trolls who oversaw the weaving and sewing, a pet among the rest of the dumb animals. I was a hard worker, and though I still acted slack jawed and compliant, I was a little quicker to understand what was expected of me than the rest. Because of this, and because of the pressing need for wedding clothing, I had been given greater freedom than the other softskins. I was also working longer hours.

  I had tried my hardest to impress upon Tuki that our meeting was a secret but was not sure I had succeeded. All the next day I was on tenterhooks, waiting for a troll to appear and drag me off to an icy dungeon.

  But Tuki came alone to the weaving room at the arranged time. I was alone, working on an elaborate crimson-and-orange gown. There was joy in his eyes, and he reached over and touched the skin on my face, with the same pleased wonderment he had always shown. Then he took my hand and led me around the room, pointing to things and proclaiming the troll name for each. Realizing at once he wanted to play our old game, I quickly responded with the Njorden word. By then I already knew many of the troll words he “taught” me but did learn several that I had been puzzled by.

  As we began to run out of objects to name, I pulled Tuki over to a stool and had him sit beside me.

  “Is Tuki happy?” I asked. I thought he might remember the word, which I had taught him back at the castle. But he did not, so I pantomimed happy as best I could.

  He suddenly began nodding emphatically and pointed to me. “Happy.”

  I thought I understood him to say he was happy to be with me, although he could have meant he thought I was happy. And I remembered the frustration I had felt in trying to communicate with Tuki in the castle. Suddenly I thought of Malmo’s story knife.

  Again using pantomime and words, I told him that I must get back to work and that he should leave. But I asked him to come back the next night, and eagerly he agreed.

  I worked quickly, to make up for the time I’d spent with Tuki. I fell asleep that night trying to figure out what I could use with the story knife instead of snow.

  The next night I was ready for Tuki. I had managed to sneak a small sack of white sugar out of the kitchen, right under the nose of the terrible Simka, though she did manage to land a sharp kick to my shin as I ran out. Before Tuki arrived I spread the sugar evenly on the floor in a corner of the room.

  When he came in I promptly led him to the sugar-covered floor and bade him sit beside me. I took out the story knife. He jumped up, thinking it a weapon, but I smiled reassuringly and urged him to sit down again. Warily he did, and I started sketching.

  I began with a short, simple tale, the one Malmo had first told me about the girl adopted by seals. I think Tuki understood most of it, and when I had finished, he clapped his hands enthusiastically.

  “More!” he said, in Njorden.

  I told him another story, then another. Finally, I again had to tell him to go so I could catch up on my work. I said there would be more stories the next night. He went, even more reluctantly than he had the night before. I swept up the sugar and hid the bag of it under some fabric.

  I did not get much sleep that night, for I had to work very late to get the allotted amount of work done.

  The next night I told Tuki one brief tale to start out with. Then I turned to him and said that I had an important story to tell him. It was about me, I said, and why I had come to the ice palace. I don’t know if he understood, but he nodded very solemnly and made ready to watch the figures I would draw.

  I took a deep breath, and using the story knife, I told Tuki my story from the very beginning, when the white bear first came to our door, to the time I spent in the castle with the white bear-man lying beside me in the bed; from the candle wax dripping on his shirt to my long and perilous search for him. I did not go into detail about my journey, just showed myself crossing land, sea, and snow to reach the ice palace. I then drew the Troll Queen and the white bear-man hand in hand, as though being wed, and myself bending over, weeping.

  I looked up at Tuki, who had been silent throughout the entire tale, his eyes round and intent, and saw that there were tears streaming down his ridged cheeks.

  “The softskin man who was a white bear must not marry the Troll Queen,” I said, my voice hoarse from the telling of the tale. “Will you help me, Tuki?”

  He stared at me, tears still wet on his skin.

  “Will Tuki help Rose?” I said again, my own eyes bright.

  Slowly he nodded.

  Urda has asked a favour of me.

  I am inclined to grant it. It is easy enough to do, and on the whole I believe the benefit outweighs any small risk.

  She says that her son, Tuki, has come to admire my Myk and is eager to serve him.

  I see no harm in allowing Tuki to be an aide or companion to Myk. Myk will be agreeable, I am sure, for he has a soft nature and will be patient with Tuki’s childish ways. And Urda will be less inclined to complain about those long years of exile and the damage she feels it did to Tuki.

  The only concern I feel is the possibility that Tuki was contaminated by his exposure to the girl in the castle, the one who raised Myk’s hopes and then betrayed him. If Tuki became attached to her in some way, he might speak of her to Myk. I do not think there is anything now that would stir Myk’s memory – the rauha slank is too powerful for that to
happen – but such a slip-up may trigger a nightmare. (I still do not know why the slank does not eliminate those occasional nightmares. It is irksome.)

  I have therefore mandated that Tuki may serve Myk, but only if he agrees never to speak to Myk of the castle or of what transpired there. Urda has been told that if Tuki disobeys this order, he will immediately be put to death.

  I will inform Myk of the new arrangements this evening.

  My plan was working – so far anyway.

  Thanks to his mother, Urda, Tuki had been appointed as a sort of companion to “Myk”. When the Troll Queen was a child, Urda was her nursemaid – and since then the older woman had continued to hold a position of trust to the queen.

  Tuki learned that Myk had a large cup of slank each night before bedtime. For a week Tuki had managed to substitute plain slank for the kind with the powder. I have some idea he switched his own slank, unpowdered, for Myk’s, which he poured away. Tuki had also contrived to smuggle in several bundles of clothing that were crucial to my plan. And in between orders for dresses, I sneaked in time to do my own sewing.

  There were only a handful of days until the wedding.

  I am glad my queen assigned the troll Tuki as companion to me during these days before the wedding. I like him very much. He listens while I practise my flauto, and I see tears come into his bright, eager eyes when I play. And he nearly falls off his chair clapping when I finish. If the other trolls like my music even half as much, I shall consider my performance a great success.

  He is good company, too. He likes to play games, especially a game in which I teach him words of my old language by pointing to things and saying the word, and then he tells me the troll word for each. I have learned much of the troll language from my queen, but Tuki has helped me learn even more. I want to assist my queen in any way I can when I rule at her side, and she is well pleased at my interest in the language of her people.

  I have been feeling somewhat odd of late. Not ill or unhappy. Just a little different, like my sight is clearer, or my thoughts. Or perhaps it is that I feel more awake; I certainly rise in the morning feeling more alert. I can’t quite figure it out, but I am glad of it.

  I have even had brief memories of the time before I came to the ice palace. Even before I became a white bear. They are fleeting but pleasant.

  Just today I recalled being a child and playing on a field of the greenest grass, with many bright yellow flowers poking through the green. There were other children and we were all laughing together at something. It was very enjoyable, the memory.

  I have not told my queen because she does not care for mention of the past. And I do not wish to upset her, especially when she is so busy preparing for our future happiness.

  Tuki managed to smuggle some of the plain slank to me, which was wonderful. Despite my increased status as seamstress and weaver, I still received only the most meagre of meals, presumably because most of my nutrition should have come from the doctored slank, which I continued to pour away. (The hole under my bed had grown quite large.) I was becoming painfully thin and worried the trolls would notice. They never did, though. Softskins were viewed as a herd, not worth taking note of individually. Our function was to provide service to the trolls until our bodies wore out. Then we were replaced.

  It was Tuki who told me that when that happened, when softskins became too old or too ill to work, they were taken to something called kentta murha. When I asked what kentta murha was, Tuki turned very white and silent. I could not get any words of sense from him after that, and finally he left me, still upset.

  I continued with my tasks. The wedding feast would be the day after next, and there were still several gowns to be completed. I barely slept at all, so hard was I being worked. I felt fortunate that Tuki had gotten me the unpowdered slank, or I might well have collapsed from the lack of sleep and food. But the slank gave me energy and strength. And I needed all my wits about me for what lay ahead.

  Finally the day has arrived. I am extremely pleased to see that all my preparations are coming together, just as I had planned. The feast tonight will be the largest and grandest gathering in the history of our people. For the very first time the trolls from the bottom of the world have journeyed north to my kingdom. Even my father, in his prime, created nothing of this magnitude. It is extraordinary.

  With my arts I myself made the gown I will wear. I will outshine the northern sun in radiance, which is not surprising in that I borrowed some of the sun’s brilliance to create the fabric.

  Simka has surpassed herself in the kitchen. And I am even pleased with Urda. Tuki has, somewhat to my surprise, been a great success as a companion to Myk. Myk has asked me to allow Tuki to attend him during the ceremony, and I have agreed. Urda is terribly pleased and has been bragging about it all over the palace. I hope the little fool does not make any stupid mistakes that will mar the splendour of the proceedings.

  Last night Myk had one of his nightmares, the first in some time. I attribute it to wedding-night jitters and am not unduly concerned. He was very agitated, though, and I had to give him double the portion of the powdered slank. It was very peaceful, holding him in my arms as he settled down to sleep, his golden head resting on my shoulder. How I love him. It is why I have done all that I have done.

  The guests for the feast will begin to arrive this afternoon, and the rooms have been made ready. Every room in the palace will be full. Most of the guests will be fatigued when they arrive, having travelled great distances, but there will be little rest for them tonight.

  We will begin with the feast. Twenty courses of the greatest delicacies in Huldre. And then will come the dancing, which will last well into the night. And then tomorrow at midday, after Myk plays his flauto, we will be joined together…for ever.

  I was kept busy until the very last minute, putting final touches on the troll ladies’ gowns – letting out a seam here, adding a silk rose there. The noise was horrible, each troll lady stridently demanding something in a rasping voice. At times I felt I was attending a flock of cawing, brightly coloured crows. My head ached and my fingers were numb.

  And then finally I was left alone. I was instructed to clean up the mess of the sewing room and then return to my quarters. As had become usual, no one stayed to supervise me. Every available serving troll was needed in the kitchen, banquet hall, or stables. I breathed a great sigh of relief, for this was one element in my plan that I had no control over. Though it seemed likely the trolls would treat me as they had for the past several weeks, leaving me alone to clean up, still there had been no guarantee.

  I had brought all I needed with me to the sewing room. And when the last troll had gone and I had given my dull-eyed acceptance to their final orders, I set to work.

  First I pulled out my leather wallet from where it had been concealed under my clothing. Though I knew the gold and the silver dresses had not been adversely affected by being folded up in the wallet for so long, I was still anxious that the moon dress might have been damaged. After all, it had been through a storm at sea as well as the inhumanly freezing conditions of my trek northward. My fingers trembling slightly, I removed the dress from the wallet and shook it out.

  I needn’t have worried. There was not so much as a wrinkle in the exquisite fabric, and I marvelled all over again at its breathtaking beauty, unbelieving as before that I had actually created such a wonder.

  I set the dress aside for a moment and quickly pulled on an undergarment I had fashioned for myself in stolen moments. To protect myself from the cold (I would not be able to wear a reindeer-skin parka to the wedding feast or my duck-feather underwear), I had stitched together several layers of very fine silk into a full-length suit that fitted close to my skin.

  Then I put on the dress.

  I crossed to a large oval mirror that the troll ladies had been using earlier to admire themselves in their gowns. It was the first time I had seen myself in a mirror since leaving the white bear’s castle, and I was shocked to s
ee my face. It was much thinner and paler, and there was a threadlike white scar on my right cheekbone, a souvenir of my brush with the bear in the ice forest. I also looked different in other ways – how I held my head, the expression in my eyes. I was not the same Rose who had left home almost two years before on the back of a white bear.

  Anyway, it didn’t matter how my face looked. I went to a corner of the room, and from under a pile of little-used cloths, I retrieved a small bundle. Carefully I unwrapped it, revealing a mask. I had been working on this mask secretly for the past several weeks. It was made of fabric, though I had stiffened the material somewhat with a thin paste I had made of flour and water. It had been an immense task, and I had used every bit of skill I possessed for working with cloth. But the result was an extraordinarily lifelike mask of a troll woman’s face. Or rather my face, if I had had the white, ridged skin of a troll.

  I put the mask on, fastening the ties under my hair, and once again gazed at myself in the mirror. It was amazing. I had been transformed into a young troll woman, if not as beautiful as the queen at least passably pretty. My mask would not have borne very close inspection under human eyes, but I was counting on the trolls’ poor eyesight to keep them from seeing through my disguise.

  The gown had a high neck and long, flowing sleeves that hid my soft skin. And I had made white gloves with a ridged texture to cover my hands. On my thumb, underneath one of the gloves, I wore the silver ring the white bear had given me.

  The day before, Tuki had presented me with a simple diadem of pearls, with trailing strands that wove into my hair. I did not want to accept the crown for fear he would get into trouble. But he would not take it back, making a maddening game, holding his hands behind his back and chuckling happily at my frustration. So I carefully arranged the diadem on my head, the strands of pearls looking like drops of pure moonglow shimmering in my dark hair.