“Thank you, Erasmus,” she said.
He bowed and left.
After eating until she thought she might be sick, the lass staggered out of the dining room. She realized when she was halfway to her rooms that she had forgotten to ask the isbjørn about the displays of strange artifacts. But the bear had gone off somewhere, possibly to eat his own luncheon in private.
He had talked a great deal while she ate. He told her that she had the run of the palace, but not to go down into the servants’ quarters because it might bother them. He asked her about her family, where her other siblings lived now and what they were like. She answered as best she could while trying not to disgrace herself eating strange food with the almost as strange silver utensils.
Now she started to go back to the entrance hall and look at the pillars again, but the thought of going back down the stairs made her groan aloud. Instead she and Rollo went to her apartments and lay down on the bed.
When they woke, it was time for dinner, and Erasmus was there to lead them to the dining room once more. He took them by a route that had fewer niches with balls of yarn and knitting needles on display. It was also farther from the entrance hall, so not a glimpse of a carved pillar was to be seen. The lass wondered at this: clearly her curiosity made the faun nervous. But had he told the isbjørn? And was he upset about it?
So, since she was still full from luncheon, she picked at the magnificent dinner that was spread before her and put some questions to the bear instead. Had he been born here in the ice palace? Did he know what the carvings on the ice pillars meant? Why were there worn-out household tools on display in the hallways?
And the isbjørn replied, “Have you tried the beefsteak? It smells wonderful. Do you care for carrots? What about strawberries? I believe that your dessert will be a strawberry tart this evening.”
“Would you like some?” The lass gave up trying to get any information out of the bear. She guessed that the enchantment kept him from saying anything.
“Yes, I might try a bit,” the bear said, and then turned the conversation to skiing, strangely enough. He took it for granted that the lass knew how, but wondered if she was keen on jumping and the like.
Her brother Einar had recently taught the lass to jump on skis, since prior to being named she had been afraid to venture too far from the cottage. Busy answering this and other questions, she ate more than she meant to, and tried to go to the entrance hall afterward, to walk off some of the dinner, but got lost.
“I told you not to snoop,” Rollo said.
“Yes, you did.” She rolled her eyes. “Now could you please help me? Can’t you smell the dining room, or the entrance hall, or our rooms?”
“No.” Rollo shook his head and then sneezed. “Ice doesn’t have a very strong smell. And the meat smell makes it even harder to find anything.”
“What meat smell?” The lass thought he meant from his dinner but wasn’t sure.
“You know, that meat smell everywhere.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said as she pushed open a door she thought might lead to the stairs that led down to the entrance hall.
Instead she found herself in a long, high-ceilinged chamber that was only dimly lit by the moonlight filtering through the window panels. She took a step forward, wondering what all the tall shapes in the room were, and stubbed her toe on something. Curious, but not wanting to stub any more toes, she went back into the hallway and got a lamp. She held it high over her head, letting the golden light shine down on—
Rollo plopped back on his haunches in surprise. “Looms?”
“Looms,” she agreed.
The room was easily four times the size of her family’s cottage, and entirely filled with looms. They were all shapes and sizes and made from all kinds of materials. There was one of elegantly carved whale ivory right next to a battered pine loom that still had a plain gray piece of cloth strung on it. One, of very rough-hewn wood and weighted with rocks, held a shimmering tapestry of breathtaking beauty. Beside it, neatly arrayed on a piece of black velvet, were several small handlooms for making belts.
“This is very odd,” the lass said after a minute.
“Yes. It is. Can we go now?”
She looked down at Rollo and was surprised to see that his hackles were raised and he was backing toward the door. “What’s wrong with you?”
“These smell like death. And more of that meat.”
“All right.” She sniffed the air, but all she smelled was furniture polish and wool. But knowing that Rollo’s nose was far keener, and his instinct for danger better than hers, she let him lead her out. Farther down the hall, they found the door that led to the right set of stairs and made their way to the entrance hall.
“Rats,” the lass said. She was still carrying the lamp she had taken from the upstairs hallway, but it was the only illumination in the entrance hall. All the torches had been doused for the night, and in the cavernous space, her lamp shed little light. By holding it right against a pillar and leaning in, she could read a few of the symbols at a time, but it soon gave her a headache, and she let Rollo take hold of the hem of her sweater and drag her up the stairs to their rooms.
Vanity overcame her at last, and she pulled one of the silk shifts out of a wardrobe to sleep in. It was far too long and kept slipping off her shoulders, but since no one would see her, she didn’t think it mattered.
She had just begun to dream about Hans Peter sitting atop a mountain of isbjørn pelts and weeping when a noise startled her awake. It was the sound of the bedchamber door opening.
“Hello? Erasmus?”
No one answered her. She reached for the candle by her bedside but couldn’t find it. She fumbled in the drawer of the bedside table, which she could have sworn held both matches and candles, but it was empty.
Soft footsteps approached the bed.
The lass pulled the covers up to her chin. “Rollo?” The wolf didn’t reply, and she remembered that he had gone out to sleep by the sitting room fire. Whoever this person was, they had passed by Rollo. She hoped that the wolf was all right.
The stranger pulled aside the bedclothes on the opposite side of the bed and got in. There was a sigh, the mattress shifted as the person settled in, and then nothing.
The lass was rigid with shock. It was too dark to even make out the outline of the person now lying beside her. “Hello? Who are you?”
No answer.
“Who are you?” She managed to say this in a louder voice.
The intruder made a grunting noise and then pulled the bedclothes up over its head. A minute later she heard a faint snore coming from under the bedclothes.
The lass wondered if the isbjørn had brought another human back to the palace. As company for her? Whatever the reason, she didn’t want to put up with it, she decided. She got out of bed and went to the door that led to the sitting room.
It was locked. Or stuck. The latch wouldn’t turn at all. She knocked on the door and called to Rollo, but he didn’t respond. She felt her way to the fireplace and pulled the bellpull, but there was no response. She went to the door of the washroom, thinking that she could pad the bathtub with towels and sleep there, but it wouldn’t open either. And in a room normally filled with candles and lamps, she could not seem to find one of them.
In the end, she dragged the topmost blanket off the bed and curled up on the divan by the fireplace. The fire had gone out, and the room was dark and chill. Despite the thoughts that whirled in her head, she fell asleep a little while later.
When she woke in the morning, it was to Erasmus setting her breakfast tray on the table beside the divan.
“There was someone in my room last night!” The lass looked indignantly at Erasmus. She noticed that there was a box of matches on the bedside table, right next to the candle that she was certain had not been there the night before.
Erasmus just smiled, a tight, strained smile, and told her that luncheon would be at noon.
<
br /> Rollo came in, stretched, and begged for a sweet roll. He was unaware that anything unusual had happened in the night, and just looked puzzled when the lass asked him where the devil he had been.
The intruder was gone.
Chapter 11
The lass was more determined than ever to find out why an enchanted bear and something called a faun were inhabiting a palace of ice, and why they needed her. Unfortunately, those same two creatures seemed determined to divert her.
Even though there was a comfortable, human-sized chair in the entrance hall, if she ever spent more than a minute there, Erasmus would pop up and distract her, or the bear would. They didn’t mind if she looked at the rest of the palace, though, so for the time being, she turned her attention to that.
Rooms led to rooms that led to still more rooms. All the chambers along the passageway where the lass’s apartments were located were similar to hers. Each one was decorated in different colors, but each one had a sitting room, sleeping room, dressing room, and washroom. Hers was the only one occupied, however, so no fires were lit in the other fireplaces, and no strangely oversized gowns crowded the wardrobes.
Other passageways took her to rooms filled with musical instruments, or strange scientific contraptions, and even more chambers devoted to homely items. She found the loom chamber again, right next to one filled with butter churns. There were washboards and clothes irons and anvils. Hammers, knitting needles, and spinning wheels. There was an entire floor that held only books, with each room devoted to a different language. The lass could only read Norsk, though, so that rather reduced the books available to her.
At least twice a day she saw the isbjørn. He would eat luncheon and dinner with her in the long dining room. Well, she would eat, and he would sit on the floor near the table and talk to her. He was never very articulate, but he would ask her what she had done that day and request that she tell him stories from her childhood.
At first she thought that meant the fireside tales that Jarl had regaled them with, which the bear was politely interested in, but then she found out he wanted real stories. He wanted to know what it had been like to get up every morning in the freezing cold and gather eggs. He wanted to know about the time they had almost butchered the white-faced doe because of a hidden fox bite. The isbjørn positively hungered for stories of everyday life in a woodcutter’s cottage. The lass obliged, but she thought his interest very strange.
Any questions about the bear’s habits or history were met with stony silence. Once or twice he looked like he wanted to tell her something, but in the end he shook his head and walked off, leaving her to eat the rest of her meal in silence. She didn’t press him for information, since it was clear to her that he couldn’t just tell her what the nature of his enchantment was. She would have to find out for herself.
She would also have to find out for herself about the stranger who came to her rooms every night. After her second night in the palace, the stranger was her constant bedfellow. The first two times the stranger climbed into bed with her, she climbed right out and slept on the divan, but the third time the lass tried this she was awakened by someone lifting her. Without a word the stranger carried her to the bed and tucked her in. Then the visitor walked around to the other side, got in, and went to sleep, back turned to her.
The lass gave up. She was tired and stiff from sleeping on the divan. Her suggestion to Erasmus that either she or her midnight visitor be moved to other rooms had been met with a question about whether or not she liked custard.
So the lass slept with a strange man in her bed.
She knew it was a man, because on that third night, after he had carried her back to bed, she dared to reach over and touch him. She ran her fingers over his face: he had high cheekbones and a shapely nose. His hair was straight and very thick, worn long so that it brushed the collar of his nightshirt (and she was relieved to feel that he had one). His chin was slightly stubbly. His breathing continued to be even while she ran her hands over his face and shoulders like a blind person, but she wondered if he was really asleep or just pretending.
Rollo seemed to doubt the stranger’s existence, and Erasmus and the isbjørn were deaf to any mention of him. She was on her own. She would have thought it was just a dream, but every morning when she woke there was a dent in the pillow beside her, and once she found a single dark hair caught in the lace at the edge of the pillowcase.
The wolf was never in the room when the man appeared, and just looked puzzled when she asked him why he didn’t try to stop the intruder. Rollo never saw or heard anyone coming in. He did admit that the bed smelled like a man the next day, but had no idea how this person could have gotten past him.
Another concern that took up the lass’s time was clothing. She was not fond of sewing, and the thought of altering those ridiculously ornate gowns had made her shudder. But after two weeks of sitting on silk cushions and dining off fine china while wearing a frayed sweater and patched skirt, she began to feel self-conscious.
Other than her nightshirted bedfellow, she was the only person in the palace who even wore clothes, so she knew that no one else cared. But vanity pricked her for the first time in her life. She was an attractive young woman, and all her life she had worn the much-mended castoffs of eight older siblings. True, these gowns were not new, but they looked like they had been worn only once, and they were of such fine cloth that she was almost embarrassed to touch them with her work-worn hands.
The lass spent a week taking in seams and cutting off excess cloth with a long, sharp pair of shears. It almost made her sick, the first time she did it. Selling one of these gowns would keep her family for a year. And here she was with dozens of them, cutting them up at will and altering their hems with her uneven stitches.
Often the gowns had pearls or precious lace that had to be removed before the seams could be taken in. The lass took some care with this, removing the lace and clusters of pearls and putting them in a scented wooden box in her bedroom. She didn’t reattach them to the gowns, preferring her clothing to be plainer, but she had a plan for them.
When the year was over she would return home. The bear had promised wealth for her family—she had seen the sacrifice that would bring it to them—but she wanted to be sure. She knew Askeladden: he was far too lazy and fond of merrymaking. It would hardly surprise her to find that his fame was tarnished and whatever fortune he had found squandered in a few years. But if she could smuggle the pearls and other jewels from these gowns out with her, she could sell them to help her family.
Worrying that she would not be permitted to carry anything with her when she left, she cut up a hideous gown of puce silk and made herself a belt with ten pockets hanging from it. In each one she placed pearls, coils of gold bullion thread, and even some rubies she removed from the décolletage of a magnificent ball gown. Then she sewed the pockets shut. She wore the belt day and night, taking it off only to bathe, to ensure that no matter what happened she would have some wealth.
That done, and the upper levels of the palace explored, she went lower. She had never seen the kitchen where her sumptuous meals were prepared, or the servants’ quarters that Erasmus had spoken of. She had wondered at first if the food was prepared by magic, and Erasmus the only servant, but as the faun grew easier around her, he came to refer to other servants.
“Who are they? Are they fauns, too?”
But Erasmus wouldn’t say. The lass remembered the faun’s sad look on her first day in the palace, when he had said that it had been years since he’d seen a lady faun. Clearly the other servants were not fauns, and she was certain that they were not human. Why else would they be kept hidden?
Curiosity filled her. What could they be? Isbjørner? Dragons? More creatures, like the faun, that she had never known existed?
But Erasmus was adamant that the servants’ quarters were no place for a lady. The lass had argued that, as the daughter of a poor woodcutter, she was certainly not a lady, but he shook his horned
head.
“You are a lady. You may not have been born in a fine palace, but you live in one now. The kitchens are no place for you.”
“I know how to make lefse,” she cajoled him. “And fruit tarts. I’ve been in lots of kitchens.” Which wasn’t quite true: other than her own, the only kitchen she had ever set foot in was her sister Jorunn’s.
“I’m sorry, my lady,” the faun had said, firmly but gently. “The kitchen is no place for you.”
So the lass had no choice but to follow him. Rollo refused to come, saying that it was rude to sneak up on a creature you did not intend to eat. He stayed in his favorite spot by the sitting room fire instead.
Meanwhile, the lass waited until Erasmus removed her breakfast tray, counted to ten, and then slipped down the passageway after him. It was very easy to follow someone through the halls of the palace, since there were niches containing hammers or crochet hooks every few paces. If Erasmus stopped or started to turn around, the lass ducked into a niche, counted to five, and then slipped out again.
In this fashion she followed the faun down six flights of stairs into the bowels of the ice mountain. It was colder here, but only the cold of any cellar. The halls were lit by torches held in ice formations shaped like human fists. Erasmus had to travel quite a ways to reach her when she rang, she realized.
Resolving to call the faun less often and spare him the journey, the lass came around a corner and stopped dead. Before her was a great arch that led into a kitchen the size of the entrance hall three floors above them, but that was not what froze her in her tracks.
It seemed that there were other servants to help Erasmus in his work. But the reason why she had never seen them before was clear as soon as her eyes adjusted to what she was seeing: the little goat-legged man was by far the most human looking. The lass couldn’t help it; she screamed.
The kitchen exploded into chaos as the servants squawked and roared and hissed and shouted. A half-dozen bizarre creatures rushed to the door of the kitchen and then stopped there, not certain what to do next. It was Erasmus who came forward and calmed them all.