Shaking his head at the lass, he turned to the other servants. “This is our new lady,” he told them solemnly. Then he turned to the lass. “My lady, please allow me to present the staff.” He clapped his hands and they arranged themselves into a row.
Erasmus went to the end where three orange lizards stood on their tails, tongues flickering and all four feet gently paddling the air. “The cooks: Zah, Szsz, and Sssth,” he said, pointing to each in turn. Seeing the question on the lass’s face, he added, “They are fire-dwelling salamanders.”
“Oh, of course,” she said. She smiled at them, trying to look as though she had not just been screaming at the sight of them cavorting in the hearth minutes before. “Your meals are wonderful,” she said with perfect sincerity. The three salamanders blushed deep red. All over.
“The scullions: Garth, Kapp, and Nillip. Garth is a minotaurus, Kapp is a brownie, and Nillip is a pixie.”
Garth and Kapp both bowed, and Nillip, who seemed to be female, made a curtsy in the air where she hovered. It was Garth who had really made the lass scream. He was easily seven feet tall, with a body like a brick wall and covered in fur that may have been clothing and may have been his own . . . pelt. He had the head of a massive bull, with great black horns and a brass ring in his nose. Kapp and Nillip were not as frightening. The former was about three feet high and looked like a little man made of bark, and the latter was less than a foot high, with butterfly wings.
“How do you do?” the lass said.
“My lady,” all three murmured together.
“The chambermaid, Fiona,” Erasmus continued, coming to a tall woman the lass had not noticed before. She was beautiful, with white skin and long dark brown hair that hung in curls to her waist. Her big dark eyes flashed as she curtsied to the lass, and she kept one hand clutched at the throat of the fur cloak she wore.
“How nice to meet you,” the lass said, wondering how she could have failed to see that there was another human in the room.
“Fiona is a selkie and cannot speak.” Erasmus went on, turning next to an ugly, gray-faced woman with enormous bat wings folded against her back, who wore a long black dress and an immaculate white apron. She—or it, rather—looked as if she were carved from stone. “And this is Mrs. Grey, the housekeeper, a gargoyle.”
“How do you do?” The lass had no idea what a selkie or a gargoyle might be, but they looked pleasant enough. Well, Fiona the selkie looked rather sullen, but at least she didn’t look dangerous, as the minotaurus did.
“A pleasure to serve you, my lady,” the gargoyle said. Her voice sounded like two stones being rubbed together. “If there is anything you need, just tell us.”
“Yes, thank you, you’re doing a . . . wonderful job,” the lass said lamely. She had never had servants before, and now that the initial shock of seeing what they were had worn off, she didn’t know what else to do. She did recover from her embarrassment enough to notice that they, like Erasmus, all wore an embroidered ribbon around their necks.
“Perhaps you should return to the upper levels, my lady,” Erasmus suggested.
Relieved by the suggestion, the lass smiled and nodded and did as he said. Back in the entrance hall, with its huge fireplace and comfortable chair, she sat for a while and thought. This was an enchantment beyond the ordinary fairy-tale kind she was used to.
First of all, there was the isbjørn that lived in a palace made of ice. But for the first time she asked herself why. Why did an isbjørn live in a palace of ice? Why did he live in a palace at all? And what did he need her for, for just a year? She had suspected that he came to her because she could understand him, but he didn’t seem to want—or to be able—to tell her what was wrong.
Now there were the servants. A faun, salamanders, a gargoyle, and . . . those other creatures. Where were they from, and why were they here? Erasmus would not answer such questions either. She would try to ask the others, but she had a hunch that they would be just as evasive.
It all came back to the white bear. The servants were here because of him. She was here because of him. Perhaps even this palace was here because of him. But why? Why was he so special? And what, for a bear, would be so terrible about living in a palace and being waited on by servants? What would be so terrible about it for anyone?
“The heart of the matter is who or what enchanted them,” she said aloud. “If I can find that out, I can find out why, and how.”
“Who are you talking to?” The isbjørn lumbered over to the fireplace.
“Myself.” She blushed.
“Oh. Am I interrupting?”
“Er. No. I can talk to myself anytime, I suppose.” She blushed even harder.
He sat on his haunches beside her chair and looked uncomfortable. “Erasmus told me that you met the other servants,” he said after a while.
“Oh, yes, they’re all quite nice.” Then, for lack of anything else to say, she added, “Why can’t the selkie talk? What is a selkie?”
The bear gave a little grunt of laughter. “A seal who can turn into a woman. Fiona can talk, and frequently does, but she is under orders not to talk to you.”
“Why is that?” The lass was offended. The seal-woman was the closest thing there was to a human in the palace, and she had been wondering if there was some way they could communicate so that they might be friends.
“Because if a selkie talks to a human, the human is bewitched by their voice. Before you knew it, you’d be waiting on her hand and foot,” the bear explained.
The lass shrugged. “It makes about as much sense as her waiting on me. I’m only the daughter of a woodcutter.”
“Yes, but you make a much kinder mistress than the selkie would ever be. Believe me.”
“Oh?” The lass arched an eyebrow at him.
The isbjørn gave his rumbling, growling laugh. “Her kind delights in singing to sailors so that their ships run aground on the rocks.”
The lass shuddered. “Oh, I see.” She reconsidered her idea of courting Fiona’s friendship. “Is the person who enchanted you the same person who brought the servants here?” She blurted out the question quickly, hoping to take him off guard.
The bear reeled back, one massive paw waving in the air. “What?”
“Is the person who enchanted you the same one who brought the servants here?” she asked all in one breath.
“Yes!” The word sounded like it had been wrenched out of him.
They sat in silence for a while.
“Are you happy here?” The isbjørn almost shouted it.
“What?” The blurted question aimed back at her took the lass by surprise.
Rather than running all the words together, as she had, the bear repeated his question more distinctly. “Are you happy here? Do you like it?”
“Well, yes. It’s beautiful, and I’ve never had such wonderful food.” She gestured at her awkwardly tailored gown, which was of peach silk embroidered with gold. “And I’ve never had such fine clothing.”
“Do you miss your family?”
The lass froze, one hand still smoothing her silk skirt. The first few days at the palace, she thought that she would be sick with longing for Hans Peter and her father. She told herself over and over again that they were well, they were safe, they were rich, the isbjørn had promised. And then the excitement of exploring the ice palace and refitting the beautiful gowns had captured her attention. While she still missed her family and their little cottage, the pain of it had faded to a dull ache that she mostly ignored.
“Do you?” the bear pressed.
“Yes,” she said in a halting voice. Guilt that she had not thought about Hans Peter all day made tears rush to her eyes. “My brother Hans Peter most of all.”
“I’m sorry,” the bear sighed. “I will see if arrangements can be made.”
“What kind of arrangements?” For a moment, a flutter of hope rose in her breast. Would he bring Hans Peter here to stay with her for the rest of the year?
“I w
ill try to have letters sent to them, and from them to you,” the bear clarified.
“Oh.” The lass felt her elation ebb, but consoled herself that letters would be better than no contact at all. And she had been in the ice palace for a month now. There were only eleven months left of her stay here.
The bear lumbered away. “I will see you at dinner,” he said over his shoulder.
Moody, she got to her feet and wandered over to poke at the fire with the silver-handled poker that hung from the mantel. While she jabbed at the half-burned logs, she rested her free hand on the carvings of the mantel. It felt like her dress: slick and slightly cold. Something about the pose stirred her memory, and for a moment she had a strange doubling sensation, as though she were simultaneously in the bear’s palace and back at home in the cottage.
The fingers holding the poker felt numb, and the lass dropped the heavy instrument with a clatter. She stumbled back from the fireplace, not wanting to catch her skirt on fire in her dizziness. She half sat, half fell into the chair, and when her head cleared she rubbed her face and looked up at the mantel.
The ice mantel felt exactly like the mantel back in the cottage. She got to her feet and moved closer, squinting at the greenish white patterns on the mantel. It showed more of the same angular symbols that graced the support pillars of the great hall and ran in bands around the white parka.
“It doesn’t just look like the carving on our mantel at home,” she mused aloud, her breath misting the air a little because her nose was only inches from the mantel. “It’s an exact copy of the mantel at home. Or rather, the cottage mantel is the copy.”
Two years ago Hans Peter had said that he “wanted a change” and made over the cottage mantelpiece. He had worked for days, fitting some new wood across the top, reshaping the old, and then finally carving those strange symbols that had captivated his youngest sister since his return from the sea.
“Do they mean anything?” the young lass had asked, tracing the raw new markings with a finger.
“It’s a story,” Hans Peter had told her as he mixed some oil to rub into the wood.
“What story?”
“A wonderful story,” he had said, his voice grim. “A wonderful story about a princess in a palace who is more beautiful than the dawn and longs for a handsome young man to love her.”
“It sounds silly,” the lass had said. She had been at the age when she scorned anything remotely girlish.
“It’s actually a horrible story,” Hans Peter had told her, his voice darker than ever. “Because it is all a lie.” And then he would speak no more of the carvings or the strange story.
“I bet I can piece it together,” the lass said now, frowning at the marks and moving to the far left of the mantel. “Love.” She traced a familiar mark with her finger. “Liar, man, sorrow, alone, tower.” She frowned harder, and then on a hunch, she walked to the right side of the fireplace. “The symbols run backward,” she said with satisfaction, upon seeing the marks for “long ago,” “princess,” and “beautiful.” “It’s a language, a backward language. And I can read it!” She slapped her hands on the ice in triumph. Then another thought came to her, and her hands fell to her sides like weights.
I can read this because Hans Peter taught me how. He can read this language. He knows this story. He has been here.
Chapter 12
Once she interpreted the story on the mantel, the strange language began to open up for the lass. Some of the nuances were lost on her, and she didn’t know all the words, but she could get the gist of the stories. She read two of the pillars and the elaborate bands of carving over the golden door. There were a great many mentions of the beautiful princess, and her endless search for love, but the tales seemed to be more menacing than romantic. To the lass, it looked as though the princess was ordering every man she came upon to love her. It was time for supper when she turned around to see Erasmus and Rollo standing behind her, looking quizzical.
“Hello,” she said, dropping her hands self-consciously. She had been running her fingers over one of the doorposts.
“What are you doing?” Rollo cocked his head to one side. “You missed luncheon and tea.” There was no greater sin than missing a meal, in the wolf’s mind.
“Well, then, you should have come to find me,” she told him.
“The fireplace was too warm,” he said, and then stretched languidly. “And when Erasmus came to take away the uneaten tea tray, I thought I’d better follow him to the kitchen, and see if you were still down there. But you weren’t, so we came to look for you here.”
“I was worried that you were still, er, shocked from this afternoon,” Erasmus said, blushing. “But then Rollo assured me that you would be fine, since he was fine, and convinced the salamanders to give him cake.” His blush faded and he smiled at this.
“Yes, I’m sorry for the inconvenience,” the lass apologized. “For all the inconvenience I’ve caused.” Now that Rollo had mentioned the missed meals and the uneaten trays, her stomach growled loudly. “Pardon me!”
“You must be starving,” the faun said with a laugh. “Dinner is ready, if you are.”
“Yes, please!” She gestured for Erasmus to lead the way to the dining room. “I’m so thirsty I could lick the walls!”
“The walls taste terrible,” Rollo told her. “I tried it on our first day here. The ice tastes like rancid meat.” He shuddered and then shook out his pelt with a look of distaste.
“What?” The lass stopped in her tracks, putting out a hand to touch the nearest pillar. “It does?” She almost licked the pillar, then and there, to see if Rollo was right. Ice that didn’t melt and wasn’t cold obviously wasn’t regular ice, but why would it taste like rancid meat?
“Please, my lady, dinner is getting cold,” Erasmus said, his face pale. “And you should not be licking the walls,” he told the wolf in a severe voice. “They are . . . you must realize this isn’t . . . the sort of ice you’re accustomed to.”
“Oh, of course.” Smiling innocently, the lass resolved to lick the wall of her bedchamber as soon as she was alone.
In the dining room the white bear was already waiting, sitting by the side of the lass’s chair. She greeted him politely, and took her seat. Erasmus served her a meal of the usual magnificence: clear soup seasoned with strange herbs, vegetables roasted with honey, fish coated in hazelnuts and drenched in cherry preserves. Afterward there was cake that had been soaked in cream and drizzled with caramel.
“Please thank the salamanders,” she sighed when she was finished. She leaned back in her chair and laid her napkin aside. “They are fantastic cooks.”
“I shall tell them, my lady. They will be thrilled.”
By the fire, Rollo rolled over and let his tongue hang out of his mouth. He’d had a fine cut of meat and a bit of the cake, which the lass had dropped into his bowl. The bear had also had a piece of cake, but otherwise had made only idle conversation while the lass and Rollo ate. He’d asked her if she’d seen the paintings in the long gallery, and did she like them (not really, they were all quite gruesome battle scenes) and had she read any of the books in the library (yes, and they were delightful).
“So you do like it here?” The bear’s voice was wistful.
“Yes, of course!” She leaned sideways out of her chair and patted one of his huge paws. “And don’t worry, I’m going to figure out this enchantment.”
“No!” He reeled back and his claws and teeth flashed at her. The lass shrank back in her chair, and the isbjørn relaxed. Slightly. “Be careful,” he said, his voice rough. “It would be better if you just waited.”
“Waited for what?”
“For the year to end.”
“And then will you tell me where this palace came from?”
“Yes.” He nodded gravely.
“Who carved the mantel in the great hall?”
The bear blinked at her change in subject. “I don’t know.”
“So you didn’t build thi
s palace? Who did?”
Silence. The bear slowly shook his head at her, as though her endless questions disappointed him.
Nevertheless she forged on. “Can you read the carving on the pillars?”
“Sometimes.”
“What do you mean?”
“Bear eyes are not good for reading,” he said, his reluctance clear in his voice. “It’s late. Good night.” He lumbered to his feet and out of the dining room.
“Wait, please! Would you like me to read them to you?” She followed him out of the dining room. Perhaps between the two of them they would be able to decipher every symbol. “Isbjørn, would you like that?”
But he just lumbered away, through a large door that locked behind him.
“Humans are too nosy,” Rollo said as he followed his mistress to their own rooms.
“Oh, hush,” the lass said, thinking hard. “If you knew what was carved on those pillars, you would be curious too.”
“I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know why the walls smell rotten. It’s only going to lead to something bad.”
“Rollo!” The lass was exasperated by his lack of curiosity. “Don’t you want to know why we’re here?”
“Yes, but I’m willing to wait until it’s time to know.”
They continued on to their rooms in silence. In silence, Rollo watched the lass take off her gown and put on a nightrobe. In silence, she brushed out her reddish gold hair and washed her face. The wolf sat beside her chair as she read a chapter of a book, a history of the first kings of the North.
Finally, when she was getting into bed, Rollo whined.
“What is it?” One foot on the floor, one foot in the soft bed, she looked at him. “Do you need to go out? The door isn’t locked.”
“No, I do not need to go out.” He sounded testy.
“What is it, then?”
“My curiosity is getting to me,” he said in a disgusted growl.
“About what?”
“About what it says on the pillars,” he snapped, as though it should have been obvious. “You don’t tempt a wolf by saying you’ve read something curious, and then not tell him!”