Echo North

by Joanna Ruth Meyer

  “Hal.”

  He takes a sharp breath.

  “It wasn’t you. It was her. She trapped you, manipulated you, made you into a wild creature. It wasn’t you. I know myself, like I never did before. I’m proud of who I am. Even proud of my scars. They’re part of me—I wouldn’t wish them away.”

  “Not even for that other life you could have had?” He smooths the left side of my face with his thumb.

  “That other life didn’t have you in it. Not as you should be. Free from her.”

  He looks stricken, and drops his hand. “I can never atone for what I’ve done. I can never deserve you.”

  “It isn’t about deserving, Hal. It never was.” I long to pull him close. I ache for him. “The old magic is stronger than guilt or betrayal. Stronger than everything she did to you, and to me. It’s stronger than time.”

  “Is it … is it strong enough to mend us?” His eyes pierce through me.

  I touch his face where the oil burned him, where a tiny half-moon scar shows white against his skin. “Yes.” My throat catches. “It is. It is.”

  And then I’m wrapping my arms around him, hugging him close, breathing him in. He clings to me. His heart beats against mine, strong, steady. “I love you, Hal.”

  His lips move against my hair. “I love you, Echo.”

  I pull my face to his and kiss him as the lake laps quietly at the shore and the moon peeks silver over the horizon. His mouth is warm on mine, his fingers smooth against my jaw. He tastes like springtime, like promises. A seed of contentment curls sweet in my belly. I let it sprout.

  I lay on his chest as we talk, long into the night. We stare up at the stars. Peace steals over us. Healing.

  “Hal,” I say, just before the fragrant wind lulls us at last to sleep. “Who was your musical friend? The one who gave you that piece you played for me in the concert hall?”

  He smiles, and pulls me closer. “Echo, it was you. The first you. You taught me how to play in the books.”

  Laughter bubbles out. “It was me!”

  He kisses my cheek. “It was always you.”

  I sigh against him.

  We fall asleep.

  EPILOGUE

  THE TREES ARE DRIPPING SCARLET AND orange and amber leaves onto the cobbled streets of the village; smoke curls up from the shops and the houses. It’s a brilliant day, if a little cold. I walk with Hal over the stones, my heart quick in my chest, my fingers tangled in his.

  He squeezes my hand. “Don’t worry.”

  I slip my other hand into the pocket of my deep blue woolen skirt, one of many things we bought with the money Ivan gave us for the journey home, and twist my fingers where Hal can’t see.

  I am glad we stopped to visit Ivan. He lives in a neat wooden house now, with a pen for goats and a room for writing. He’s older and happier and a little more rotund. Isidor is smiling and stately as a queen at his elbow, Satu bouncing and lively and always laughing. It was good to see them—but my heart urged me on. Hal saw, and understood. We only stayed two nights.

  Ten years spun away while Hal and I were on the Wolf Queen’s mountain, and it’s been nearly twelve now since I last saw my father. We stride up the last little ways to his bookshop. My stomach churns.

  “Don’t worry,” says Hal again, and wraps his arm around my shoulders.

  I’m glad to have him here, solid and warm beside me. His presence gives me strength.

  And then we’ve reached the shop, and we’re stepping through the door, listening to the chime of the bell overhead that heralds our arrival. We stop just inside, standing together by the window. I drink in the scents of my childhood: ink and paper, leather and dust and oil.

  My father is with a customer, standing behind the counter wrapping a bundle of books in brown paper as I’ve seen him do so many times before. He’s the same, and yet not the same: his hair has turned snow white, his face is creased with wrinkles. But he’s alive. He’s here. I haven’t lost him entirely to the passage of time.

  “May I help you?” comes a bright voice.

  I jerk my attention to a young girl who must have slipped out of the back room while I was staring at my father. She’s maybe eleven, and wears her hair in two brown braids draped over either shoulder, her blue and gold embroidered kerchief tied neatly behind her neck.

  I stare at her, anything I’d prepared to say vanished entirely from my mind.

  “We’re here to see Peter Alkaev,” supplies Hal.

  “If you’re looking for a book, I know them all,” says the girl. “Well, almost.”

  Tears prick behind my eyes. “Are you his daughter?”

  She smiles, and sticks out her hand. “I’m Inna.”

  The customer steps past us with his package of books, walking through the door and out into the street.

  “He can see you now,” says Inna, evidently not minding that I’m too shocked to shake her hand. She trots toward the counter. “Papa! There’re visitors to see you!”

  Hal squeezes my hand once more, and we follow Inna, my heart beating so hard I can barely breathe.

  My father has ducked down behind the counter, securing the customer’s payment in our battered cash box. “With you in a moment!” he calls cheerily.

  “They’re not after books, Papa,” Inna explains. “Just you.”

  He pops up again, smiling at his second daughter, my … sister … and then his eyes pass to me and he sees me, really sees me. His face blanches white. “Echo?” he says, hesitant, as though he hardly dares to speak the word.

  I nod, tears rushing to overwhelm me. “It’s me, Papa.”

  “Echo!” he cries. I’m vaguely aware of Inna’s round-eyed shock as my father comes around the counter. In another moment I’m wrapped in his embrace and we’re crying on one another’s shoulders and I can taste my joy—sunlight and honey and sharp winter wind.

  “Echo,” he says, over and over again. “Echo.” He weeps into my hair.

  It’s only then, when my father lifts his tear-stained face, that he registers I’ve brought someone with me, though he’s forestalled from inquiring by Inna’s overflowing amazement. “Inna. This is …”

  Before he can finish, Inna has flung her arms around my neck, laughing. “I knew you would come back! I knew you would, one day!”

  And now I’m laughing, too. I feel a fierce connection to her already. She lets me go and my hand finds Hal’s. I can’t stop smiling—I feel the happiness will make me burst. Once more, he squeezes my fingers.

  “Hal, this is my father. And—and my sister. Inna, Papa …” I swallow, glancing from Hal to my father and Inna, then back again. “This is my white wolf.”

  I TELL THEM MY STORY in the room above the bookshop, where a fire licks quietly at the grate and steam curls from chipped tea mugs. Rodya is there, with his wife and two half-grown boys, who seem to very much like pulling Inna’s hair. Donia isn’t there. Donia hasn’t been there for several years now. Rodya tells me she tried to sue Papa for his money (he has grown more than solvent again), but the solicitors would have none of it. So she packed her bags and left in the night without a word. The divorce papers arrived by courier several months later. But let’s not focus on that right now, Rodya says—today is about me and my homecoming.

  So I tell them everything, with Hal beside me, holding my hand and filling in the gaps if I leave anything out. Inna keeps the tea coming, and partway through the story Rodya’s wife, Ara, serves us stew and bread with honey.

  When I finish, the night is half spent. Rodya’s boys have fallen asleep by the fire, and he and Ara watch them, smiling. Inna is snuggled up close to my father, and I lean my head on Hal’s shoulder, listening to his heartbeat, the rise and fall of his breath. My heart is full to overflowing. I never thought I would have so much family as I do.

  “What now?” asks my father, breaking the silence. He lifts his eyes to mine, and I am thankful beyond words that a century didn’t pass us by on the mountain. Ten years is too much, yet it’s
a blessing. I ache for Hal—he will never have such a happy reunion.

  He squeezes my hand as if reading my mind. “We are going to the university. It’s been a while since Echo was accepted, but they might still have her application filed away.”

  My father smiles and I laugh and kiss Hal’s cheek. “I’m going to be a doctor,” I say.

  “And I’ve got four centuries of history to catch up on,” Hal adds. “I’ll find some sort of occupation in the meantime.”

  “But we’ll visit as often as we can, and when—and when I am a doctor, we want to live here, in the village. Not waste any more time.” My throat cracks.

  “Oh, my dear girl,” says my father quietly, “I think your time has been very well spent.”

  Tears slip once more down my cheeks, and Hal nudges me toward my father. I go, sinking to a seat beside him. He hugs me close, careful not to disturb Inna, who has fallen asleep on his other shoulder.

  I glance across at Hal. He smiles at me, and gives a little nod.

  “There’s one other thing, Papa.”

  I think he knows—there’s laughter sparking in his eyes. “What is it, greatheart?”

  I draw my right hand out of my skirt pocket and show him the ring on my fourth finger, three interlocking bands of yellow, rose, and white gold.

  My father smiles and kisses my forehead. “Congratulations, my dear girl.”

  And then I’m laughing, and Inna wakes up and demands to know what she missed and I tell her all about how Hal and I were married on a mountaintop with the North Wind and his family standing witness.

  It’s only later, when Hal and I crawl into the tiny bed in my old room that we have a moment to talk just the two of us. My father sold the house after Donia left and the room is Inna’s now, but she insisted on sleeping on the couch. I tuck myself under Hal’s chin and he wraps his arms around me and pulls me close.

  “Thank you for saving me,” Hal whispers into my hair.

  “I never wished to do anything else.”

  “Thank you, all the same.”

  Sleep creeps in at the edges of my mind, but I don’t let it claim me, not yet. “I love you, Halvarad Wintar.”

  “And I love you, Echo Alkaev.”

  I nestle even tighter against him. “Hal?”

  “What is it, my love?” he mumbles, his words slurred with sleep.

  “Don’t ever let me go.”

  “Not ever.” He hugs me fiercely. “Not ever.”

  He kisses my hair, and our hearts beat as one, and I fall asleep to the sound of his gentle breathing.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  EAST OF THE SUN, WEST OF the Moon, is a Norwegian fairytale that has its roots in the myth of Cupid and Psyche, as does Beauty and the Beast—all contain elements of a girl going to live with a monster in a magical castle. In the original East of the Sun, the wolf is a white bear, and he’s been enchanted by a Troll Queen who lives in a place that’s east of the sun, west of the moon. The girl embarks on an impossible journey to find him, enlisting the help of all the winds on her way—the North Wind is the one who takes her to the Troll Queen’s castle.

  For Echo’s story, I have also borrowed a big element from the Scottish ballad Tam Lin, in which a brave girl frees an enchanted man from the Fairy Queen by holding on to him while he is transformed into all kinds of hideous monsters.

  The setting for Echo North was inspired by nineteenth-century Siberian Russia, and the landscapes Echo travels through in the latter part of the book are real, including the frozen lake, which is based on Lake Baikal, the turquoise ice, and the ice caves. The reindeer skin tent that Ivan and his family live in is real, too.

  Behrend and Czjaka, the composers that the wolf introduces Echo to, are Bach and Chopin, very thinly disguised, and Hal’s quip about Behrend/Bach and the harpsichord is true.

  I hope I have done justice to Echo’s story and the source materials I’ve drawn from—any inaccuracies or misrepresentations are, of course, my own.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I AM A HUGE LOVER OF fairytales and am so honored to add a retelling of my own to the many, many wonderful ones that have come before me. This book wouldn’t exist without Robin McKinley’s Beauty, which I discovered at the library when I was eleven or twelve (it’s the first book I remember ever making me cry). I’m indebted to Edith Pattou’s beautiful and captivating East, which introduced me to East of the Sun, West of the Moon, and to Diana Wynne Jones’s mesmerizing Fire and Hemlock, a retelling of Tam Lin.

  Huge thanks to my wonderful wizardly agent, Sarah Davies, for her insight and tenacity.

  To my editor, Lauren Knowles, for her wisdom, encouragement, and brainstorming sessions, and for loving Echo’s story as much as I do.

  To the whole team at Page Street, for making my lifelong dream come true a second time!

  To my critique partners, Jen Fulmer and Laura Weymouth—I couldn’t function without you! (Special thanks to Jen for the idea to describe the house as a quilt—you’re a genius.)

  Thanks to Jenny Downer for her astute comments, for keeping me company while I write/edit, and for that marvelous teapot—I’m still in awe.

  Thanks to Hanna Hutchinson for reading an early draft—can’t wait for our future joint book tour!

  Thanks to Sharon Lovell for introducing me to Chopin all those years ago, and to my piano students, past and present—you guys are the best.

  I couldn’t have finished my edits for Echo without my wonderful army of babysitters: Louise and Gary (my mom and dad), my mother-in-law Joanie, my sister-in-law Sarah, and Jenny. This book would literally not exist in its present form without you!

  Thanks to my dear husband, Aaron, for riding the emotional roller-coaster that is writing a book with me once again, for your support and encouragement, and for keeping me supplied with ice cream and excellent hugs.

  And thanks to Arthur for making writing—and life—an even bigger adventure than it was before. Love you, munchkin.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JOANNA RUTH MEYER is the author of Beneath the Haunting Sea, which Kirkus described as “epic, musical, and tender.” She wrote her very first story at the age of seven—it starred four female “mystery-solvers” and a villain in a gorilla suit, and remains unfinished to this day.

  Since then, she’s grown up (reluctantly), earned a bachelor’s of music in piano performance, taught approximately one billion piano lessons, and written nine novels, many of them during National Novel Writing Month.

  Joanna hails from Mesa, Arizona, where she lives with her dear husband and son, a rascally feline, and an enormous grand piano. When she’s not writing, she’s trying to convince her students that Bach is actually awesome, or plotting her escape from the desert. She loves good music, thick books, loose-leaf tea, rainstorms, and staring out windows. One day, she aspires to own an old Victorian house with creaky wooden floors and a tower (for writing in, of course!).

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

 
; Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Part Two

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Contents

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2019 Joanna Ruth Meyer

  First published in 2018 by

  Page Street Publishing Co.

  27 Congress Street, Suite 105

  Salem, MA 01970

  www.pagestreetpublishing.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  eISBN 9781624147166

  Our eBooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension. 5442, or by e-mail at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018946119

  Cover design by Sara Pollard, book design by Rosie Stewart for Page Street Publishing Co.

  Cover image: Roots © Shutterstock/rolandtopor, Wolves © Shutterstock/Gerasimov Sergei, Frame elements © Shutterstock/standa_art