North Child

  The one with the whip came towards us, dragging the captive behind him. He shouted out something to our driver, and this time I clearly recognized one of the words he said. The word for “dead”. It was a word Tuki had taught me back in the castle, when we came across a large fly, its legs sticking up in the air.

  I shuddered. The figure roughly unspooled his whip from the body and left the inert form lying on the hard snow. By then order had been restored and everyone was seated in the sleighs. Using their whips on the reindeer, the drivers guided the sleighs towards the ice palace.

  Someone near me was sobbing quietly, but the rest were silent. I wished I could see the faces of the forms clustered around me in the sleigh.

  I gazed back at the huddled figure lying on the ground. And then I realized that these creatures, with their harsh voices and ridged skin, driving the sleighs were trolls. Tuki and Urda were trolls. And the pale queen who had taken the white bear was a troll. The Troll Queen.

  I felt foolish that I hadn’t figured it out before. How often had I heard stories about trolls, or Huldre folk, when I was young? They were described in many ways – hairy, enormous, three- to twelve-headed, drooling, hideously ugly – none of which seemed to describe Tuki or that pale beautiful queen. And yet there were a few things that did fit – the voice like rocks and the craggy skin – and I did dimly remember the few tales of Huldre folk, a more obscure kind of troll, describing them as beautiful.

  We came up to the palace, and as we began to circle it, I saw that it was even larger than it had appeared from afar. In fact, it was more of a town. The ice palace itself towered above, and in front of, an extensive sprawl of smaller buildings. These were made of ice as well but not the same finely polished glittering ice of the palace; they were more opaque and coarsely hewn. A high wall made of blocks of ice circled the compound, with various gates and doors granting entrance. We passed through an imposing back gate made of black iron that stood open.

  There were several trolls waiting to greet the sleighs. Some stepped forwards and took charge of the reindeer, while others roughly steered the occupants of the sleighs towards a low-lying building. I heard the drivers of the sleighs speaking to the palace trolls, and recognized the words “servants” and “dead”. There was another word I recognized. It was the word “slank”, which was a favourite beverage of Tuki’s, although there was a particular kind of slank he hated. Urda gave it to him when he had been bad; it made him sleepy and forgetful. I resolved not to drink any slank until I knew what kind it was.

  If it was not exactly warm inside the ice building we were herded into, at least it was not as cold as it was outside, and some of my fellow sleigh travellers began pushing off their hoods and unwrapping their scarves. I saw they were humans like me, and though their features and hair colour varied widely, the expressions on most faces were similar – a dull, blank look, with their mouths hanging slightly open. The few who did not wear this slack-jawed expression looked frightened and confused. I tried to make my own face as blank as those around me, but I watched and listened closely to what was going on.

  I understood the words “rooms” and, again, “servants” and “slank”.

  As we were led down a long hallway, I realized that the humans around me had been brought to the Troll Queen’s palace to be servants. And that slank was what had put those dazed, blank expressions on their faces. It also, I guessed, kept them obedient. I wondered about the one who had tried to escape and was killed by the troll with the whip. Had the slank not worked on her, or had it worn off?

  Then I was thrust into a small room, and the door was pushed shut behind me. I saw there was no handle at all on the inside of the thick ice door. Because of the diffused light that came in through the icy walls, the room was dimly lit, and I noticed a platform with a pile of fur-skins on it. And a bucket. That was all the room contained.

  As I stared numbly at my new quarters, the door opened and a large troll appeared. He pushed a cart filled with steaming earthenware cups. Taking one off the cart, he thrust it at me, then quickly departed. I had made my face empty and slack, but he hadn’t even looked at me.

  Luckily he had not stayed to see whether I drank the beverage. I put it up to my nose, which was a mistake – for it smelled incredibly delicious, and hungry as I was, I had to struggle to keep from drinking it. But even smelling the slank made me feel woozy and stupid, so I began hunting around for a way to get rid of it. I discovered that the platform on which my bed of furs was piled was made of wood. It was also movable, so I pulled it away from the ice wall and poured my slank onto the ice floor, in a spot in the middle. Its heat ate a shallow hole in the ice. Then I pushed the bed back into place and sat on it, wrapping myself in a fur-skin.

  So, I had done it. I had found the place that could not be found – the land that lay “east of the sun and west of the moon”. And somewhere within the icy walls of the troll palace, I was convinced, was the man who had been the white bear.

  My queen is very good. She watches over me, ever thoughtful of my needs. I feel very fortunate to be valued so highly by my queen.

  She is beautiful, too – the whiteness of her skin and her strong green eyes, her tall proud form, the richness of her clothing. She tells me that I once found her skin odd, its roughness and texture, but I do not remember this. In truth, I believe it is my queen herself who dislikes her skin, for she is always trying to change it using different creams she concocts with her arts. Some of the concoctions make my eyes burn or tickle my nose when I come close to her, but she will not give up the effort. I know she keeps trying partly because she so admires my soft skin.

  I remember nothing of the time when we first met, my queen and I. She tells me it was in the green lands, and that I was never a servant like the other softskins. She tells me that I was a prince in the green lands, but I remember nothing of this. Sometimes I am curious, but mostly it does not matter to me, what came before.

  I do, however, remember little bits from when I was a white bear. When I put on my white furs to go outside with my queen, it feels strange, like I am putting on what should already be there. And I remember that it was an unhappy time for me, though I do not recall why.

  It is to my queen that I owe my freedom from my long enchantment as a white bear. A sorceress from the green lands cast a spell on me, and when my queen discovered my plight, she used her arts to release me. Then she brought me here to her northern kingdom of Huldre. This is just one of the many things for which I am grateful to my queen.

  I am very well content in my life here. If it were not for the nightmares, there would be nothing to complain of at all. And my queen is most generous when the nightmares come. If I cry out, which I often do, she will come to me at once and bring me a cup of warm slank. She sits with me until my shaking abates.

  Another proof of my queen’s kindness towards me is the high regard in which she holds my music. She had her craftsmen make me a flauto. It is a very fine instrument, and she loves to hear me play it. And recently she told me I am to play for our wedding feast. It is a great honour, and once again I am filled with gratitude to her.

  I hope I shall make my queen proud.

  And so did my life as a servant in the ice palace begin.

  At first I was given the gruelling, filthy routine of emptying the buckets of waste from the servants’ quarters. There were many buildings of servants, I discovered, and the waste ditch was a long walk, some distance outside the palace gates. I worked from the moment I was awakened by the troll with the slank cart (he carried a whip, as if the slank were not sufficient incentive to rise; he only had to use it on me once) until I fell into my bed of fur-skins at night. Food was meagre, and I began to suspect that the slank, which I continued to pour away under my bed, contained most of the nutrients that kept the servants going, as well as provided warmth in the frozen environment. The other softskins, though still slack jawed and dazed in expression, looked reasonably healthy and well fed, while I grew thinner
each day.

  I was always cold, too. The trolls clearly had a much higher tolerance for cold, for they walked around with only a single layer of clothing while we softskins attired ourselves from the pile of fur-skins in our rooms. I had my parka and long underwear from Malmo, which helped enormously, especially on my treks out to the waste ditch.

  After several weeks I was moved to the kitchen, which was a definite improvement because there were ovens that warmed me and I could snatch an occasional scrap of food. Trolls, I discovered, were fairly shortsighted, which made stealing food without being caught easier than I would have thought. The kitchen was the domain of a large, loud female troll named Simka. She, along with the rest of the trolls, clearly considered the softskin servants to be little better than animals and treated us accordingly. Kicking was her favourite form of communication and she had a powerful foot. Despite the padding of my animal-skin clothing, I was soon covered with black-and-blue marks.

  As I have said, my fellow softskins were kept sedated and dazed by the slank. They made little effort to interact with one another, and when I did hear them speak, I discovered that they spoke in a wide range of languages. The trolls must have gone in their sleighs to many different parts of the world to collect their servants, and I wondered how they went about it.

  There were several trolls in charge of the servants, and they had at least a rudimentary grasp of the array of languages spoken by the softskins. But most of the communicating was done by pantomime – which was sufficient for the menial jobs the softskins were assigned. In the few cases when more complicated instructions were necessary, higher-level trolls were brought in to make explanations.

  As for myself, I made a few attempts to speak to my fellow servants but was always met by the same blank look. Whether that was because they did not understand Njorden, or because of the slank, I couldn’t be sure.

  Slowly I learned about the workings of the palace, and by keeping my eyes and ears open, I picked up more and more of the troll language. Frequently I wished that I had my dictionary as well as some of my other belongings, which were stowed back in the ice cave.

  I discovered early on that the softskins were not closely guarded. I think that was because of the drugged slank we were given, and also because of the frozen, deadly land surrounding the palace. In addition, we were not viewed as individuals at all but more as a herd of cattle or sheep. We went where we were told, did as we were bid, and found our way back to our “stalls” at the end of the day.

  There were no locks on our rooms. None were needed. I experimented one night and discovered that although the door was very heavy, I could push it open with great effort. And there was no one patrolling the halls at night.

  I suppose it would have been noticed if a softskin was missing when the morning slank was delivered, but it never happened. Occasionally a softskin would become confused and then be found wandering in a part of the palace it wasn’t supposed to be in, but this did not cause undue alarm. The softskin was merely given a beating and led back to its room.

  The troll language was very difficult to learn, bearing no relation to Njorden or any other language I had heard. It was lucky that I had made that beginning with Tuki, or I don’t think I would have been able to penetrate it at all. As I learned more and more, I was reminded of times I’d had to pick out the stitches of a particularly complicated piece of sewing. One word might unravel a whole set of words, and then I’d come to a knot and have to begin all over again. Frequently I wished for something with which to write down the words I was learning, as I had with Tuki, but at least the lack of writing materials forced me to memorize. And learning the language gave me something to think about as I shivered in my pile of fur-skins every night.

  I remember well the day I first figured out that juh-vihkia meant “wedding feast”. Simka had just given a solid kick to my knee, and I was hobbling over to place a tray of newly cooked nut cakes on a table. She said a sentence that made it clear to me that the nut cakes, along with the many savoury items the kitchen had been producing recently, were for a wedding to be held in the palace. Then she said “Katal” and “Myk”, with a knowing sort of leer on her face. I had already figured out that Katal was what they called their queen, and I had frequently heard the name Myk as well as the word softskin spoken in conjunction with Katal. I had assumed that Myk was some special softskin servant to the queen. But, if my understanding was correct, this Myk was actually marrying the queen – a softskin and a troll. And suddenly I knew who Myk was. I felt as though I’d been kicked in the stomach, and I dropped the tray of nut cakes with a clatter. Simka exploded with rage, bearing down on me. She slapped me across the face repeatedly until my ears rang and my lip split open. Then she kicked me out of the kitchen with a powerful boot, and I fled to my little room. Pressing a cloth against my bleeding lip, I collapsed onto my pile of skins.

  I lay there, desolate, staring at the icy walls. I’m not sure why it came as such a shock. What had his words been? “I go with her. For ever.” The Troll Queen hadn’t gone to all that trouble to possess the man who had been a white bear (I could not think of him as Myk…) because she needed a servant, or to acquire a new friend. He was to be her mate. And all this time I had been actually helping to prepare the very food that would be eaten at the wedding feast of my white bear. The thought of it made me sick to my stomach.

  Since arriving at the palace, I had been looking for the man who had been the white bear. I had acted the part of a slack-jawed softskin, being careful not to draw any attention to myself but keeping my ears open, hoping for some mention of the words lumi karhu or vaeltaa, for “white bear”. But of course there had been none. The white bear was now a softskin named Myk who was going to marry the Troll Queen. How soon? I wondered, and vowed to listen more closely than ever to the kitchen trolls’ conversations.

  But I was not able to act on this, for the next day I was moved to a job in the stables. My punishment for ruining a tray of nut cakes, no doubt. The work was cold and hard; I no longer could supplement my meagre meals with kitchen scraps, and the troll who then oversaw me was just as unpleasant as Simka, if not so fond of kicking, which was small comfort. The one consolation of my new position was the reindeer. They were extraordinary, beautiful, with their soft, pristine white fur and their enormous black eyes. Mostly my job was to clean out their stalls, but occasionally I got to feed them as well and, even more rarely, curry them, brushing out their silky manes.

  The best thing about being assigned to the stables, it turned out, was that it gave me, eventually, the opportunity to retrieve my gear from the cave.

  I must have showed some skill at my duties – the reindeer liked me, I believe – and I was gradually promoted to a more responsible position in the stables. My job involved readying the reindeer when they were to be hitched up to their sleighs and even, happily for me, to take them outside the palace gates for exercise.

  Initially I did this in company with a troll overseer, who watched me closely to see if I showed any sign of wanting to run away. I kept an obedient, subservient look on my face, attentive only to the animals and showing no interest in my surroundings. I must have convinced him, for I was then sent out by myself to exercise two of the reindeer. I rode one, holding the other’s lead. The troll overseer clearly had decided there was little risk in my trying to escape, a softskin’s chances of survival in that frozen landscape being nil, and presumably the slank was eliminating any such thoughts.

  The first two times on my own I did not attempt to locate the cave, in case I was being watched. But the third time I casually made my way in the direction of the cave. It had snowed during the time I had been at the palace, and I began to despair of ever finding it beneath the snowfall. But then my eye fell on a familiar-looking hump, and as I circled it, I recognized the contours of

  the cave. I dismounted and, holding the reindeer leads with one hand, dug out the snow-covered opening with the other. Everything was just as I had left it. I had
prepared a mental list of the items I wanted from my pack, and I quickly began digging them out.

  It was freezing work, opening up my coat and placing those icy packets close to my skin. When I was done I fastened my coat and mounted one of the reindeer, pressing my body against the animal for warmth.

  I was punished for being gone too long, for straying too far, with a boxing of the ears and no dinner. But no one noticed my bulging coat, and later I greedily ate a small packet of frozen smoked seal meat I had thawed using heat from the slank I was given. Despite my punishment, they wouldn’t dare skip giving me that. I stowed all my things in the hole made large by the hot slank I poured away every day, and went to sleep that night with, for the first time in a long while, a full stomach.

  One day while I worked, I heard the stable trolls say that the queen and Myk were to have a sleigh ride, but when they arrived I was hustled out of sight into one of the back stables. Apparently only a few softskins were allowed anywhere near the queen. But to think that the man who had been a white bear was only a short distance from me made my breath go short and my heart feel like it would slam out of my chest. If only I could have darted out, grabbed him by the hand, and fled from the frozen place. But I could not. I had to be patient.

  The next day my job was changed again. At first I thought I was being punished for having strayed too far on the day I had sneaked to the cave. But I later realized the change was most likely due to some mending I had done on the harness for the reindeer, for I was moved to a position that involved mending and sewing, and my new troll overseers were well pleased to discover my ability in this area.