West

by Edith Pattou

  He got his flauto out of its velvet pouch, and tentatively at first, he began to play.

  And the sun rose to the sound of the bright notes of a simple Fransk melody played on a flauto.

  Neddy

  I WAS SURE WE WERE GOING to lose Father on the second night of his illness. I was sitting by his bedside, and he started gasping, saying he could not breathe. That he was being smothered. His eyes looked terrified. He threw off his coverings and flailed on the bed. Mother came running in and held Father in her arms, speaking calmly to him, telling him to breathe deeply, that he was going to be fine.

  Sib joined us with a pile of clean, cool cloths. She sponged Father’s face and chest, and suddenly he gave a great shudder and went still. Panic rising in me, I reached for his wrist and was relieved to feel the faint thrumming of his heart against my fingers.

  Sib laid her hand on Father’s forehead. “I believe the fever has broken,” Sib said. “He is not out of danger, but this is a good sign.”

  Relief flooded through me. I sank into a chair, closing my eyes. I felt that I could sleep for days.

  “You two get some rest now,” Mother said. “I will stay with Arne.”

  Sib and I left the room.

  “Thank you, Sib,” I said to her, pausing in the hallway.

  “Have a good long rest, Neddy,” she said. “And be sure to wash your hands,” she added.

  I entered my room, collapsing on the bed, with not even enough energy to lift the covers over me, and fell into a deep sleep.

  Mother

  ARNE SLEPT, AND I COULD TELL he was no longer feverish. I dozed a little, but was awake to see the rays of the rising sun through the shutters. After checking on Arne, who was breathing evenly, still in a deep sleep, I went to the kitchen to prepare breakfast for Estelle and Winn.

  During these days of sickness, Estelle had mostly had to fend for herself, as well as doing much of the looking after of Winn. Over breakfast I told her how helpful she’d been to all of us, how proud of her I was, and she beamed at the compliment. She was also very relieved to hear that Arne was better.

  Sib came into the kitchen. She asked after Neddy, and I told her he must still be sleeping. Her brow furrowed a little.

  “I’ll just check on him,” she said.

  She returned quickly, and I saw at once she was agitated.

  “Water,” she said tersely. She grabbed her bag with the medicines, and hurried back to Neddy’s room.

  I felt a terrible weakness come over me. Not Neddy.

  Estelle looked at me as I got unsteadily to my feet.

  “Is Oncle Neddy sick now?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, child,” I said. “Please take some of this apple juice in to your grandfather. Tell him I’ll be with him soon.”

  Estelle nodded gravely. And I went outside to pump more water.

  Rose

  NEITHER OF US WAS RIDING the horse as we approached the bend in the road right before it led directly to our house. I walked a little ahead of Charles, wanting to be able to turn and see his face when he saw our home for the first time.

  But there was nothing. No flicker of recognition.

  Perhaps it will come when we are inside the house, I told myself.

  “I know the people who live here,” I said, gesturing toward the house and trying to keep my voice neutral. “They are away, traveling, but we can stop here for the night.”

  I tethered Ciuin, giving her fresh oats, and led Charles into the house. I was barely conscious of anything except watching his face. I had vowed not to be obvious, but it was difficult to mask my emotions.

  “It is a pleasant home,” Charles said, looking around, seemingly unaware of my avid gaze. “Who lives here?”

  I couldn’t restrain the sob that burst from me. It was too much, too overwhelming, being here in our own home and him such a stranger to it and to me. I turned away sharply.

  “I’m sorry,” I said in a strangled voice. “’Tis only something stuck in my throat. I need water.” I hurried back out the front door.

  I made my way over to Ciuin, leaning against her warm, solid flank, fighting tears.

  I had tried tempering my hopes, but I had become fixated on the belief that when he saw our house, this place where we had lived together as man and wife, where our child was born, he would remember.

  But he hadn’t. And a horrible possibility crept over me. He might never remember.

  When I first found him, I had been so happy. He was alive. But now . . . he was no longer my husband, my white bear. He was a stranger. I didn’t know him; he didn’t know me.

  Perhaps not a stranger. To him I was Nyamh, the lady with violet eyes who had been kind to him.

  I would try to be patient. But deep down I was beginning to believe that between my white bear and me there was a door locked tight, with no key.

  White Bear

  I STOOD IN THE HOUSE, by myself, not knowing what to do. Nyamh had left in a rush, making a noise that sounded as if she was crying, though she said it was just something caught in her throat.

  She had been watching me so closely. This place had to be somewhere I should know, should recognize. I looked around helplessly, willing it to be familiar, desperately hoping it would all come flooding back. I picked up a blue bowl. I should know this bowl, I said to myself.

  I wanted to know it. I wanted the world to make sense again. I wanted to understand why I saw flashes of pictures in my head, of a seal’s whiskers trembling, of swimming in a frigid sea, of rolling in the snow, of the bulge of a setting orange sun resting on the edge of a frozen shoreline.

  The house felt comfortable, like someplace I’d like to live.

  But I did not know it.

  Mother

  WATCHING THE SWEATING SICKNESS take hold of Neddy was agonizing. Both Arne and I were half out of our minds with fear and grief. And Arne was still so weak from his own recent illness that I worried for him as well.

  We had both seen so many die before this. The girl with the red hair who worked in the bakery. The banker with an overfondness for lager. Even the mayor of our town had died just two days before. Willem’s wife, Annette, and our own dear Sara. We’d seen whole families taken away in carts to be buried.

  But the powerlessness I felt watching Neddy in the throes of this disease that thundered through his body was unbearable. Our son. Just as we had felt with Sara, Arne and I would gladly have given our lives for his, without a second thought.

  Sib never left Neddy’s side. Her pale, drawn face wore a look of immense and focused determination. It gave me some kind of comfort to think that Sib would do anything in her power to keep him from dying.

  At the end of twelve hours, when the sweat had subsided and the final stages of the illness began to appear, her face grew even more set, fiercer, if that was possible.

  Neddy’s breath was short, his face the color of bleached bones. Lassitude had come over him, and he lay limp. Sib kept spooning water into his mouth. When she sensed him drifting off to sleep, she spoke his name loudly, firmly. She even shook him to keep him from sleep.

  I knew why. It was said that if a patient fell into slumber, they would most surely die.

  From across the room I saw Neddy grow still, his eyes shut. Sib shook him hard, then harder, but he didn’t stir. She looked up at me.

  “Leave, Eugenia,” she said.

  I looked at her, uncomprehending.

  “Leave. Now,” she repeated, urgently. “Shut the door.”

  I left the room.

  Rose

  EVEN THOUGH IT FELT AS IF I had been on the road for months and I would gladly have welcomed a warm bath and a comfortable bed, I did not want to stay in my home. It was too painful.

  I did not know what to do next. Where to go. My only thought now was to take Charles to Trondheim with me, if he would go. In truth, there was nowhere else in the world he could go.

  Ever since our arrival at the house, and the emotional outburst I had tried t
o hide, Charles had been very quiet. He looked drawn and unhappy. I was not much better myself.

  When I told him that we would be journeying to La Rochelle, and from there take a ship up to a town in northern Njord, he just nodded.

  That night, after making camp, we silently ate a simple meal by the fire.

  I could not make small talk. I felt hollowed out, close to hopeless.

  “Nyamh,” Charles abruptly said. He had a look in his eyes I could not read in the unsteady flicker of the firelight, but his voice was strained.

  “Yes?”

  “I have been thinking,” he said. “Perhaps it is time I returned to my home, to one of my father’s palaces. The Château d’Amboise, or maybe Saumur, where my Aunt Valentina spends a good amount of time. There will be doctors there who could help me . . .”

  I stared across the fire at him. My throat was constricted, incapable of speech. Silence lay between us, so dark and heavy I thought it might blot out the flames of the campfire. How was I to tell him that his father and his Aunt Valentina, of whom he seemed very fond, were long dead and buried? That he had no home, at least not one he remembered.

  “Yes,” I began carefully. “That is something to consider. But there are reasons why it perhaps might not be the best course of action.”

  “What reasons?” His voice had become high-pitched, and in a sudden flare of firelight, I could see his eyes were wild, his hands clenched.

  I opened my mouth and shut it again. I did not know what to do. The truth would terrify him. It might even break him, for good.

  He was leaning forward, looking into my face. He suddenly stood.

  “No,” he said, his tone deliberate. “I do not want to know.” He purposefully crossed to his pack and drew the flauto out of its velvet bag. Returning to his place by the campfire, he began to play.

  The playing calmed him, as it had before, and not much later, we both retired to our bedrolls.

  I lay wide awake, staring up at the stars. It was time, I thought, for me to face the possibility that the Troll Queen had reached with her pale, ridged fingers into my white bear’s mind and removed me from his memory, his heart. Forever.

  I didn’t think I would sleep at all, but eventually drowsiness overcame me and I fell into a deep slumber.

  I was home in Trondheim, and I was looking for Neddy. I couldn’t find him anywhere. I searched all the rooms of the house, then went out to the meadow, down by the Nidelva River. But he was nowhere. I had the thought he was hiding from me, to pay me back for all the times I had gone missing as a child and he’d had to come looking for me.

  Finally I gave up, exhausted, and made my way back home. I opened the front door, and there he was. But he was lying on his back in the middle of the great room floor. There were puddles of water all around him. His body was very still, and I could not see any sign that he was breathing.

  Neddy, I cried out. His eyes didn’t open.

  Neddy, I cried again, louder. I touched his skin. It was ice-cold.

  NEDDY! I cried a third time, so loud that it woke me.

  I was trembling violently and could not stop. Charles appeared beside me. He had a skin bag in hand, the one with the last of the wine from the castle under the mountain.

  “Drink,” Charles said.

  Sitting up, I obeyed. I emptied the small amount that was left.

  I lay back down, on my side, wrapping my bedroll around me.

  “Who is Neddy?” Charles asked.

  “My brother,” I said, my voice barely audible.

  I was shivering again. I don’t know if the nightmare was a lingering effect of the troll-snake venom, but I was filled with dread that something very bad was happening to Neddy. La Rochelle was still days away, and I desperately hoped there would be word from home when we got there.

  Mother

  I LEFT THE ROOM BUT DID NOT SHUT the door all the way, lingering on the threshold. And I saw everything that happened inside the room.

  Sib rapidly crossed to the windows and opened them as wide as they would go. She stood there a moment, her body leaning forward, urgent. Then she sat back down beside Neddy, closing her eyes.

  And I could have sworn that I heard singing. I couldn’t see Sib’s lips moving, but the singing must have been coming from her.

  The curtains in the windows begin to stir, gently at first, but gradually stronger, until finally they were billowing wildly. I could see Sib’s hair blowing about her face. She was standing now, leaning slightly over Neddy, her eyes still closed.

  I could feel the wind through the cracked doorway. The air was cool, crisp. It was dry, too, not like the heavy, humid late summer heat we’d been having.

  I could almost see this wind as it swept through the room, rustling tablecloths, flicking at Neddy’s bed coverings. And I could hear it, like music, like a melody I had heard somewhere before.

  It wasn’t possible, not any of it. I had to be dreaming, or in some altered state brought on by my fear for Neddy.

  But I saw Sib sit beside my son on the bed and take him in her arms. The wind had softened so that it stirred only her silver hair, and now I could see her lips moving, and she was indeed singing.

  It was beautiful. I felt tears spring into my eyes, but they were not tears of grief. They were tears of hope.

  I thought I saw Neddy’s eyes flick open, and the singing stopped, not abruptly but gently, gradually.

  And I heard Sib speak. Her voice was low so I could not make out what she said. Except for one word that rang out clear and distinct. Love.

  Rose

  THE NEXT DAY AS WE JOURNEYED, both of us on foot, I couldn’t shake my feeling of unease about Neddy.

  When we stopped at midday, Charles sat across from me and I handed him a portion of stale bread and cheese.

  “You are worried about your brother?” he asked.

  I was tired and wasn’t sure I could abide talking about Neddy with this stranger who had once been my white bear. “There might be sickness in the town where he lives,” I said.

  He nodded. “I lost both an older brother and sister to sickness, but it was before I was born so I never knew them. You are close to your brother.” He did not frame it as a question. “Can I ask you something?”

  I nodded, a little wary.

  “I have been wondering why you came for me, how you knew where I was being held. I think perhaps you and I were . . .” He paused awkwardly, then started again. “In the parts of my life I don’t remember, were you and I . . . friends?”

  “We were.” I tried to keep my tone even.

  “Were you in my father’s court?”

  I shook my head.

  “Perhaps we are related?”

  I found myself unable to answer. I kept my eyes down, concentrated on chewing the stale bread.

  He opened his mouth to say more, but winced, putting his hand to his forehead.

  “I have these flashes,” he said. “And I don’t know if they are memories or dreams or . . .”

  “What are they of?”

  “They are odd things, like immense looming glaciers. A herd of caribou thundering away from me. The bright red of seal’s blood on the snow. Was I perhaps an explorer of some kind? One who traveled in the far north? To the Arktisk, even?”

  I was silent. Finally I said, “You did travel the world. And yes, you were in the Arktisk.”

  His eyes widened. “So they are memories.”

  “I think they must be.”

  “I am having them more often. And sometimes they last longer than just a flash.”

  “That is good,” I said.

  And finally I felt a thread of hope.

  Neddy

  I HAD BEEN DREAMING, AT LEAST I THOUGHT it was a dream, that I was embarking on a journey, a long one, it seemed. In the distance I could see the faces of those who waited for me. Sara, Annette, Havamal’s wife. They were watching me come, smiles of welcome on their faces, making sure my journey toward them was safe.

 
I heard a voice singing, or maybe it was several voices. I wasn’t sure whose voices they were at first. I didn’t think Sib’s was one of them, but then I did hear her voice and she was speaking to me. She sounded annoyed, chiding me for even thinking of going on my journey without her. I wanted to protest, tell her that I would never choose to, but she shushed me. And finally I heard words coming from her lips, words I never thought to hear.

  And I decided my journey must wait.

  Rose

  BY MY RECKONING, WE STILL HAD TWO DAYS until we would arrive in La Rochelle. We were walking along a stretch of road I remembered well, and I was thinking of the last time I had traveled it, when Sib, Estelle, Winn, and I were heading to La Rochelle to catch our ship to Trondheim. Winn had been in the sling around my chest and he’d been sleeping, but as we passed this very grove of birch trees with their white trunks, he had opened his eyes and smiled up at me. It was that sweet, glowing smile I could never get enough of. I felt tears come into my eyes as I remembered. I missed my bairn so much, and between the Sweating Sickness and Jaaloki’s threat, I was horribly worried for his safety.

  To distract myself, I deliberately turned my thoughts to Charles, who was walking beside me, leading Ciuin.

  He was having memories. I told myself this was a promising sign. They were from his time as a white bear. I wondered if perhaps his memory was coming back chronologically. Because of the Troll Queen, he had gone from a boy playing with a red ball to a white bear. He was a white bear for close to one hundred and fifty years. That would be a lot of memories.

  I took a furtive glance at his profile.

  In the past days, I had found myself getting used to things as they were, interacting with him as if he was a distant friend, polite and kind, yet not overly familiar. But there were moments when I would catch a familiar expression on his mouth, or see the dark golden eyelashes on his cheeks when his eyes were closed, and my heart would break all over again.