No reaction.
For the next few hours until dawn, the lass and Rollo tried everything to wake the prince. The lass shouted and shook him, Rollo licked his face and even bit his shoulder gently. She pounded on the outer door, begging for help, but no one came. She poured the ewer of water from the washstand over his head, but the prince did not stir. When Princess Indæll came to collect them, the lass was huddled on the bed by his side, clutching his hand and weeping. The princess smiled smugly as the lass gathered up her parka and boots and pack.
“I have something else,” the lass said in a small voice as they crossed the entrance hall. She dropped her pack and fished out the golden carding combs. Taking up the ball of uncarded wool the moster had given her, she demonstrated the technique with shaking hands.
The troll princess was fascinated. Other members of the court gathered around to watch as well, their rancid breath and glowing eyes making her feel faint.
“Come back at sunset,” Princess Indæll ordered after a few minutes. “You shall card the wool fine for me, and then I shall keep the combs. In return you may spend another night in the prince’s chambers.”
Numb, the lass nodded and put away the combs and wool. The cold outside the palace was like a slap in the face. She felt her eyebrows and lashes freeze instantly, the skin on her forehead tightening. Shrugging into her parka, the lass tramped back around the palace to her little cave. She crawled in and fell asleep with her head on Rollo’s flank.
Chapter 30
The next night was much the same. After Princess Indæll and several dozen of her court had watched the lass card the wool into a neat twist, the princess left her in the prince’s chambers. The lass was still reeling from seeing the queen peering at her from the doorway to the ballroom: she was more frightening than her daughter. The lass couldn’t even pretend to read while she waited for the prince to appear, and when he did, he was unconscious across the back of the same centaur.
The centaur rolled him onto the bed, bowed to the lass, and left again. She tried to stop the centaur, to ask him what was going on, and even dared to touch his arm and then his horselike flank, but he would not look at her. His eyes straight ahead, he paced out of the room, shutting the door and bolting it despite her pleas.
“Well! No help there,” she said to Rollo. She remembered the compassion in the centaur’s eyes from the night before, though. “Probably under threat of death if he talks to me,” she reasoned.
She and Rollo spent another night trying to wake the prince. They pulled his hair, and the lass slapped him as hard as she could, although it brought tears to her eyes to do it. He did not respond, and for their last hour together, the lass simply lay beside him and reveled in the familiar sound of his breath.
The troll princess came to fetch them at dawn, her smile even broader. The lass was too exhausted and out of sorts to remember the spindle until she had been shut out of the palace. She and Rollo went to their nest, but neither could sleep. They had only one more night.
After a restless hour the lass got up, stripped, and scrubbed herself with snow. Her hands and feet were blue and her joints ached with cold by the time she was done, but she did it all the same. She put on the cleanest of her shifts and stockings, her favorite blue skirt and scarlet vest, and then put the parka over it all. She brushed her hair until it shone, and plaited it in a four-strand braid that Tordis had taught her. Leaving her pack with Rollo, who thought she was crazy, she took the gold spindle and the hank of wool she had carded the day before and went to sit under Indæll’s window.
She scraped the hard snow flat to give her a place to drop the spindle. Then she rolled a large snowball for a seat. Arranging her skirts neatly, she took the wool and began to spin.
The window behind her creaked open a few minutes later, but the lass didn’t turn around. She forced herself to keep on spinning, and even hummed a little.
“What in heaven’s name are you doing?”
The voice was female and speaking Norsk, but it was not Princess Indæll’s. It sounded human, and young. Surprised, the lass stopped spinning and turned around.
Dressed in blue livery with an embroidered scarlet ribbon at her neck, a young woman leaned out the window of the princess’s chambers. Hair so fair it was almost white was braided into a coronet around her head, and she had the milky skin and rosy cheeks of the North. Her wide blue eyes held a touch of humor, and her mouth was caught between gaping and smiling.
“Oh, no! You too?” she said when she got a good look at the lass.
“Tova?” The lass gasped. “Is it really you?”
The blue eyes widened even farther. “How did you know my name?” Then her eyes fixed on the white parka that the lass wore, and the roses disappeared from her cheeks. “Where did you get that parka?”
“It belongs to my brother, Hans Peter.”
“Are you—why, you must be the youngest, the little pika!”
Tova hoisted herself up and over the windowsill and half fell into the lass’s arms. They hugged and kissed each other’s cheeks and cried.
“I feel as though I know you,” they both said at the same time.
This set them to laughing and crying again. Tova demanded to know where Hans Peter was and how he fared; the lass wanted to know why Tova was working at the palace.
Sobered by the question, and by the news that Hans Peter was safely at home but still haunted by his enchantment, Tova sank down on the snow beside the lass. She reached out and fingered the embroidery on the white parka.
“I changed the embroidery to make it so that Hans Peter could escape from her,” Tova said. “But I’d never done magic before and didn’t think that it had worked. I came here, looking for him, and was caught.” She shrugged. “I thought, too, that I might be able to break the hold on your brother completely.” She pointed to some of the embroidery that ran along one sleeve. “It’s a curse: not even in death will he be free. She wants them to love her, to think only of her, forever.”
“You’re so good!” The lass clasped Tova’s hands, a fresh wave of tears running down her cheeks. “I’d like to do the same thing, but if you have been here for years and haven’t made any progress. . . .” The lass sighed, feeling even more hopeless than she had earlier. “I didn’t even guess that the bear and the man in my bed were the same person.”
Tova giggled at this. “Hans Peter talks in his sleep. I would say things to him and he would answer, thinking it was part of his dream.”
“Oh.” The lass thought about this. “That explains why Torst and Askel always complained about having to share a bed with him.”
Tova laughed again. She had a merry spirit, despite the shadow in her eyes. The lass estimated that she had been in service to the trolls for nearly ten years. She must have been nearing her thirtieth birthday, for all her youthful looks.
“And then we passed notes to each other as well,” Tova said, lowering her voice. “When he was human, just before he would come into my bedchamber, he would leave a letter in the sitting room. And I would leave one for him there as well. The servants never knew, or the princess would have found out.” She paused, smiling in reminiscence. “Did you never find your prince’s parka?”
“His parka?”
Tova plucked at the white fur cuff. “This is Hans Peter’s; your prince has one as well. If we could change his, the way I changed this one, he could get free. But there isn’t much time; they’re to be married tomorrow noon.”
“Wait, you mean—?” The lass felt even more foolish than she had before. “This is what causes the transformation?”
“Didn’t you know?”
The lass only blushed in reply, then a thought struck her. “How is it that she can make such fine parkas, if she cannot even card wool?”
“Trolls can’t make anything,” Tova said, shaking her head. “They aren’t natural creatures: they can only destroy.”
“Erasmus said something about that, that they cannot make things, which is
why they are so fascinated by human tools.” The lass swallowed. “And I’ve heard the legends about their . . . palaces. Rollo, my pet wolf, said that the ice palace smelled of rancid meat.”
“It’s true,” Tova said, her nose wrinkled with disgust. “They take thousands of lives, filled with the creative forces they don’t have, to build a palace like this. He’s probably smelling the . . . evilness of it.
“She doesn’t sew the parkas and boots, either,” Tova continued. “A servant does, and from the pelt of her last husband, no less.”
They both shuddered.
“Then she enchants the ribbon and has it sewn on.” Tova reached out to finger one of the embroidered bands.
The lass shook her head; trolls were beyond her ken. “But Hans Peter’s pelt . . . ? Hans Peter is still alive.”
“She used the scraps from the one before, the same one this parka is made from,” Tova explained, her expression dark. “I had to help the gargoyle who made it. It was terrible.”
“Why don’t you leave?” This had been bothering the lass since she recognized Tova. “Hans Peter isn’t here; why don’t you go?”
Tova pointed to the ribbon around her neck. “This. All their servants wear one. It’s how they know where we are and what we’re doing. It’s too close to the skin to alter. Some of the other servants have volunteered to let me experiment with theirs, but it hasn’t worked.” She opened her mouth to say something else, closed it, shook her head, and then said it anyway: “A naiad, a faun, and a centaur all asked me to try with their collars. They died.”
“Oh, no,” the lass gasped, and put her arm around Tova. “At least you tried to free them,” she consoled her. She hesitated and then plunged ahead. “Do you think that you could alter my prince’s parka?”
“We’ll have to hurry. You’re not allowed in during the day?”
“No, but I’ve been bartering things for a chance to be with him at night. He won’t wake, though!”
“She puts something in his wine at night so that he will sleep,” Tova said. “She’s taking more precautions since Hans Peter got away.”
“Why does she toy with them this way? Why the year of being an isbjørn, and why were we there with them?”
“A good question,” Tova said. “It took me two years to find someone who could answer it. It seems that the first human prince she ever married extracted a promise from her, that she would give him and anyone who came after a way out. If the prince can find someone to stay with him as a beast by day and a silent, unseen man by night, to live that way for a whole year, then he can go free.”
“It seems almost crueler than just stealing them away and marrying them right off,” the lass said.
“That’s their nature,” Tova said simply. “I’m not allowed to speak to your prince. But I prepare his meal trays. I can hide a note on one and warn him not to drink any wine tonight. And I’ll see if I can’t find his parka. It was more luck than cleverness that I found your brother’s. He kept me awake, talking in his sleep, and as I paced one night I tripped over it.”
“But how did you know what this said?” The lass fingered the embroidery. “It wouldn’t have meant anything to me, except Hans Peter had taught me the troll symbols.”
“My father was the captain of the Sea Dragon,” Tova explained. “He had run afoul of trolls before, and had taught me the runes, as he calls them.”
“Did he teach Hans Peter?”
“Most likely. They were stuck in the ice for many days before the troll princess found them. Most of the crew were dead.” Tova’s face grew sad. “I visited my parents a few months after I went to live in the palace of ice. My father thought that Hans Peter had died as well.”
The lass put one hand over Tova’s to comfort her. “Of course,” Tova went on, “my father is now a rich merchant who owns many ships.” Her voice was bitter.
Before the lass could answer, both young women were startled to hear a troll calling from inside the palace. “Hey, you! Lackwit!”
“That’s me,” Tova said with a tight smile.
They embraced again. Tova scrambled up the bank of snow beneath the window and the lass gave her a push to help her back in. “Sorry,” she called, when Tova tumbled head over heels onto the floor of Princess Indæll’s sitting room.
With a laugh, Tova leaped to her feet and shook down her skirts. “I’m all right.” She looked around quickly. “I’ll leave this window open. Keep spinning so that you can make your bargain for tonight. If she doesn’t come by in the next few minutes, I’ll figure out a way to lure her. And I’ll get a note to the prince.” She bounded off to answer the ever-more-shrill summons. The lass sat back down and began to spin.
After a little while, Rollo came wandering over. “Are you still just sitting there? Hasn’t anything happened? It’s been hours!”
“Rollo!” The lass dropped her spinning and reached out to take hold of his ruff. She was so excited that she kissed him on the nose, which made him sneeze. “I can’t wait to tell you—”
“You can and will wait to tell him,” rasped a voice behind her. “For now, you will keep on spinning.”
The lass whirled, but the window behind her was still empty. She heard a cough like rock being rubbed on a steel file from above her head. Looking up, her whole body went numb. The windows of the second story were full of trolls. It seemed that the entire court, save only the princess herself, was gathered to watch the lass. The order, and the cough, had come from the queen herself. She pointed an imperious finger at the lass. “Continue. And face us, this time.”
Shaking, the lass did as she was bid. When the spindle was wound with a more or less even thread, the lass held it up for the court to admire. They applauded and began to drift away from the windows. When it looked like the queen might also leave, the lass gave a deep curtsy.
“Your Majesty, a favor?”
“What is this?” The queen scowled at her.
“Your Majesty is so wise,” the lass said carefully, “she surely knows that I have bartered my wealth and skill to spend the past two nights with Princess Indæll’s betrothed.”
“I had heard.” The queen’s red-lacquered nails tapped on the windowsill.
“I thought that, since Your Majesty has gotten so much pleasure in watching me spin, I . . . might have . . . earned . . . another night? I will give Your Majesty this gold spindle, and the fine thread that I have made.”
“Very well.” The troll queen waved one hand. The spindle sprang from the lass’s grasp and flew to the queen. “Present yourself at the front doors at sunset.” Then she held up one finger in warning. “This will be the last time I allow such a thing, you understand. Tomorrow my daughter and the prince will be wed, and there will be no more dallying with human maids.”
“Of course. Your Majesty is very kind.” The lass curtsied again, and the window shut with a slam.
“Quick, back to our cave,” the lass said to Rollo.
“What? Why?”
The lass hiked up her skirts and started off at a run without seeing if he followed. “I don’t want the princess to see me standing there. She might demand that I give her something else, and I have nothing left but dirty shifts and snagged stockings. The last thing we need is for her to be angry at us tonight.”
“All right, but then will you tell me what happened while I was asleep?”
“Oh, yes, I’ll tell you everything. And then I need to try and sleep. It’s going to be another long night.”
Chapter 31
Dressed in the best that she had left, the lass followed the queen and her daughter through the halls of the golden palace. They both smirked at her when they left her in his rooms, alone save for Rollo, but she smiled back. This is going to work, she told herself.
Again she was too nervous to read, and Rollo paced with her. After no more than an hour, Tova stuck her head into the sitting room, grinned at the lass, and told her that she had given him the note.
“And if he didn?
??t read it,” she whispered, “I may have found the antidote to the sleeping potion.”
“Thank you!”
“I have to go.” Tova winked and ducked back out of the room, closing the door behind her without a sound.
The lass’s heart sank when the centaur servant brought the limp prince into the room, just as he had the last two nights. But when he rolled the prince onto the bed, the centaur winked at the lass just as Tova had. He even reached down and patted Rollo’s head as he went out.
“Your Highness?” The lass shook the prince’s shoulder gently.
His eyes popped open, making the lass gasp. He grinned up at her. “Hello there, my lass.”
Without thinking, the lass threw herself into his arms. He caught her easily and they embraced. He kissed her cheeks and then her mouth, and she clung to him, laughing and crying as she had earlier with Tova. But this was very different.
“I can’t believe that you’re my isbjørn,” she said at last.
“I can’t believe that you came all this way,” he said. “How did you get here?”
“I rode on horses loaned to me by three old women who had also loved and lost the princess’s isbjørner. Then I rode the backs of the winds, east, west, south, then north, to reach this place.” She gasped, out of breath when she finished her recitation.
He squeezed her tightly. “Thank you a thousand times for coming so far. It’s more than I had hoped to be able to see you and speak to you as a man.” Then his dark brows drew together, his expression clouding. “But tomorrow I must marry Indæll.”
“There has to be a way out.”
He shook his head, his mouth a thin line. He shifted her so that she was sitting more comfortably on his lap, and she put her arm around his broad shoulders. “We’ll never get past the guards, even if we make it out of the palace. And there’s no way off the island.”
“We have to think of something. There must be a way out for us. And Tova.”
“Tova, the human chambermaid?”
“Yes. When my brother Hans Peter was the isbjørn who lived in the palace of ice, Tova was the girl who lived with him. She followed him here, but he had escaped.”