West

by Edith Pattou

  They watched me, silent now after that first exchange. I gazed around the room and saw the tools of weaving and sewing—spinning wheels, distaffs, baskets of many colors of wool and thread, among other things.

  The Three Weavers of Mora.

  Something at the back of the room caught my eye. It was an enormous loom that took up the entire wall, and in it was an equally enormous tapestry, which was clearly in the process of being woven.

  “Look, she’s bleeding!” came the higher lilting voice, and I saw that it belonged to the woman seated on the far right of the table.

  I reached up and felt a trickle of blood coming from the cut on my forehead. I found the cloth in my pocket and pressed it to the wound again.

  “Come, sit,” said the second voice I had heard, which came from the woman in the middle. She gestured at a chair on the other side of the table from them.

  “I am Uror,” she said. “This is Verendi”—she gestured at the one with the high voice—“and this is Skuld.” The third woman gazed at me, unspeaking and unsmiling. I had not heard her voice yet.

  “I am Rose,” I said.

  “Yes, we know,” said Verendi, and she laughed again. “We have been looking forward to meeting you. Or at least I have. Uror didn’t believe you would make it this far, and Skuld—”

  “I had my doubts,” Uror interrupted. “But I always knew it was possible.”

  “You must be hungry!” said Verendi. And she went to the hearth and pulled a loaf of bread from the fire, steam rising off its surface.

  “I hope you feel comfortable here. We tried to make it homey and familiar for you. Of course what we are seeing is a bit different from what you see,” said Verendi.

  And suddenly I was looking at a lush grotto and the three women were seated in purple velvet chairs pulled up to a gleaming white marble table. Impossibly bright birds darted here and there. The enormous loom with the weaving in it was the same, though it hung between two white marble pillars.

  Then just as swiftly, the grotto was gone and the room was as it had been, like my family’s great room in Trondheim. I blinked.

  “Uh, yes,” I said. “It is very homey.”

  Verendi was now standing at the wooden table, cutting slices of warm bread, one of which she set on a plate, along with grapes and a hunk of yellow cheese. The sight of the food made me feel weak. We had been very sparing with our provisions the past few days in the currach.

  Verendi came to me with the plate and was about to hand it to me, but stopped, saying, “Oh, but first . . .”

  She lifted her forefinger and ran it over the wound on my forehead. I flinched as her finger approached, but found that instead of hurting, her touch felt warm and comforting, no pain at all.

  “There,” she said. “All better.”

  And I reached up and touched where I thought the wound was, but felt nothing, only smooth skin.

  “I’m afraid I can’t do anything about the other,” she said, pointing to my snakebite. “It’s already mostly healed.”

  She handed me the plate, and as I took it, I noticed that part of one of her fingers was missing, the first finger of her left hand went only to the first knuckle. She poured me a cup of an amber-colored drink and handed that to me as well.

  The bread was melting soft, the cheese perfectly sour and sweet all at once, and I drank deeply of what turned out to be a fragrant peach-tasting wine. As I ate, my eyes fell on an echecs set. It was placed on a table up against the left wall of the room. At a distance, it looked very similar to the one in the Troll Queen’s throne room.

  “Yes,” said Verendi, breaking into my thoughts, which was unnerving to say the least. “That echecs set is very like the one the pale queen had. But this is the original. It washed onto our isle about three, or was it four, hundred years ago?” She looked at the other two.

  “Three,” said Uror.

  “Yes, three. And there were several sets. They came in these boxes.” She hopped up and showed me one of a few boxes. It was a polished light-colored wood and carved with images of a beast with a ribbon-shaped body and paws that gripped the edges of the box.

  “At any rate, we took a fancy to them. So we used our arts to give them power. It makes echecs games more amusing, especially for Skuld. When the queen came to find us the first time, we gave her one of the queen pieces. It seemed fitting, you know.”

  “And when she returned,” Uror said, “we gave her a second queen, from one of our other sets.”

  “That’s right,” said Verendi. “And with her arts, she made complete sets to go with them.”

  I looked at the box and the echecs set blankly. Two queens. I knew of only the one queen, the one I threw in the fireplace at the top of Mont Blanc.

  “It was clever of you to throw it into the fire,” said Verendi.

  I stared into her pale eyes.

  “You’re confusing her,” said Uror.

  “So the Troll Queen came here?” I asked, wanting to understand.

  “Oh yes, I thought you knew that already,” said Verendi. “She found us, just as you did. And she had a great anger in her, but underneath the anger was a great love.”

  “Verendi has always had a soft spot for great loves,” explained Uror. “Which has been known to cause difficulties.”

  “You always say that, but I—”

  “The Trojan War?” stated Uror.

  “All right, yes,” said Verendi with the air of one on the losing side of an oft-repeated argument. “Perhaps the Trojan War was a mistake,” she added, looking regretful for a moment. But she laughed her sweet laugh.

  Uror just shook her head. I noticed as she did so that there was something different about her left eye, a greenish silver glint, almost as if she had a sliver of green glass in the corner of her pale iris.

  “This one has no power at all,” said the third woman abruptly, the one called Skuld. Her voice was the deepest of the three, but it was lovely, too, like the sound made by a musical instrument that Charles had once shown me, a basso he had called it.

  “We knew that,” said Uror.

  “Why is she here, then?” asked Skuld.

  “It seemed only fair,” said Verendi. “You agreed at the time.”

  Skuld just shook her head, still unsmiling.

  “Why did the Troll Queen come to you?” I asked.

  “Ah, revenge mostly,” answered Uror. “And normally we don’t interest ourselves in revenge. But we were bored that day, and Verendi kept going on about the great and beautiful love that burned underneath the anger. She convinced us.”

  “Convinced you to do what?”

  “To give her the first queen,” Uror said with a hint of impatience. “And just a small bit of our arts, to augment hers.”

  “She had been badly hurt, you know,” Verendi chimed in. “In body and in spirit. Her arts, too, had suffered.”

  “I see,” I said, though I didn’t really. And suddenly I was angry. “So she fashioned a chess set,” I said, “and when she played with it, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people died.” I tried to keep my voice neutral, but anger was making my voice brittle.

  Uror gazed at me steadily. “We are of the old class of gods, you know. Capricious,” she added with a faint smile.

  “And what of Aagnorak?” I said. I was shaking now.

  “Oh, yes,” chimed in Verendi, “there is that. Still a good possibility, I believe.”

  “You would let that happen? You would allow all the human beings on earth to perish?”

  “Occasionally you humans need a sweeping out,” said Skuld, implacable.

  “That is true, Skuld,” said Uror. “But the answer to your question is maybe yes, maybe no. Verendi and I think it is too early. Besides, we aren’t terribly keen on trolls ruling the world. Humans are messy, but infinitely more entertaining.”

  “Trolls aren’t really all that powerful, you know,” said Verendi. “They are just better than you humans at finding power and using it. Like the sun.�
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  “And us,” added Uror.

  I stared at them, not able to speak, a chill running through me. They were monstrous, perhaps even more so than the Troll Queen.

  “Can we send her away now?” said Skuld. “She is becoming tiresome.”

  Verendi laughed. “But don’t you see?” she said earnestly to the other two, almost as if I wasn’t there. “This short, ungainly, rather dirty girl with her squat body and purple eyes may have an even deeper love than the Troll Queen. That is her power.”

  Skuld made a grating sound like the bow struck hard on a basso string. It could have been a laugh, a derisive laugh.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Did you not journey to Niflheim, or as you and the white bear called it, ‘the land that lies east of the sun and west of the moon’? I always thought that sounded so pretty,” said Verendi with a happy sigh.

  “That was just to make things right, because of the candle—”

  “But you crossed the Ice Bridge on your own two feet, the only human to have done so, as far as we know.”

  “Yes, but—” I started.

  “And what about this journey? Why did you come here, to this isle of the Morae?”

  “I am looking for my bairn.”

  “The child born of the love between you and the white bear. You see, that’s the mountain-moving, death-defying true love I was talking about,” Verendi trilled triumphantly.

  “To be accurate, she has never actually moved a mountain,” Uror said.

  “No, but she helped set one on fire,” said Verendi. “And she bested the ash dragon with her wind sword! Not even the Valkyries did that.”

  I was getting frustrated with these women, with their pale hair and pale eyes and musical voices, calmly talking about me as if I wasn’t there.

  “You said you gave the pale queen a second echecs queen? Recently?”

  “Yes,” said Uror. “That’s when we learned you had bested her with the wind sword. That was a lucky find, by the way. And when she came this time, Skuld was in a mood to be disruptive. She finds the idea of Aagnorak entertaining,” Uror observed with a shrug. “So we gave the Troll Queen the second queen and a bit more of our arts.”

  “Where is she now?” I asked, my voice shrill.

  Verendi suddenly raised her head and said, “Hold!” And she gracefully ran over to one of the windows of the blackhouse.

  She stood there, staring out, looking as if she was listening for something.

  “Verendi,” said Uror in a warning voice.

  But Verendi ignored her. Her body went rigid for just a few seconds, then relaxed. She turned around and made her way back to the table, a dreamy smile on her face. “Speaking of true love,” she said.

  “You are meddling again,” said Uror.

  And I don’t know what put the thought in my head, but I blurted out, “Do you know what has happened to Charles?”

  “Funny you should ask,” said Verendi. “There was some very bad weather, but he is safe now.”

  “Then he is alive?” I asked.

  Verendi gave her melodic laugh. “Oh, yes, he’s alive!” she said.

  “You are impossible,” muttered Skuld to Verendi.

  I looked back and forth between them.

  Uror spoke up. “You should know that one thing we have in common with the trolls is that we like games.” She gestured at the echecs set.

  “We always have,” agreed Verendi.

  My heart sank. Was I to play another losing game of echecs?

  “Therefore,” Uror said, breaking into my thoughts, “we have an agreement with the pale queen that in exchange for giving her the second queen, if you were in fact to turn up on our isle, we would arrange for there to be a task, three tasks actually—”

  “Three is our favorite number,” said Verendi.

  “And if you accomplish these tasks, we will tell you where to find your son. And the queen,” finished Uror.

  “Who will undoubtedly kill you, and then she will set off Aagnorak,” said Skuld. She stood and moved to the echecs board. As she moved, I noticed that there was something protruding from the folds of the back of her gown. It moved slightly, and I realized what it was. A tail. Like that of a large cat, long and white and soft-looking.

  So it wasn’t only their voices that were different. Each had another characteristic that set them apart—the missing half finger of Verendi, the green eye of Uror, and Skuld’s tail.

  “Oh, Skuld, you are always so sour,” trilled Verendi.

  “Tell her the tasks,” Skuld said, “so we can return to our game.” She stood over the echecs board, studying it.

  “You are a weaver, like us,” said Verendi to me.

  I watched her pale eyes with a sense of unreality, like I was in a dream or, rather, listening sleepily to one of the old tales Neddy used to tell me as a child at bedtime.

  “What am I to weave?” I asked.

  “Three cloaks. One made of fire. One made of water. And one made of the wind.”

  Of course. Impossible, all three. But all I said was “You will supply me with the materials I need?”

  Verendi laughed. “Of course. At least, you shall have a place to work, a loom, and all the wool and thread you should require.”

  “Very well. Show me the loom.”

  White Bear

  THE STORM CAME UP FAST AND FIERCE. Soon waves the size of houses were coming at me in quick succession, tossing me high, then dropping me low. I clung to the ridiculously puny paddle as if it somehow made a difference, and perhaps it did, at least at first.

  I think the buried white bear in me kept me going, too, for a time, but I was tiring, losing strength.

  A particularly large wave knocked me down, driving me deep underwater, and it took too long to find the surface. I sputtered, my chest heaving, and realized I had lost my paddle. I saw an enormous wave heading toward me and knew that I wouldn’t be able to survive it. I was too weak.

  And suddenly an odd sensation took hold of my body. I felt like I was being stretched and torn. Pain shot through me, and it wasn’t from the wave.

  When the wave crashed down on me, I glided through it with ease, my arms and legs powerful. I didn’t know where the surge of energy had come from, but I was relieved. It didn’t matter about the paddle anymore. I was somehow buoyant on my own and able to ride the waves much more efficiently. It was even exhilarating.

  I was conscious too of feeling immensely hungry.

  Gradually the storm died down and I could think straight. Something strange and miraculous had happened, but it was also something that felt like it had happened before. It felt familiar.

  I reached forward with my arm, and I immediately saw that my arm was not an arm. It was a paw with white fur and black claws.

  I knew then. I was no longer a man. I was a white bear. Again.

  Neddy

  WE WERE STILL IN ABERDEEN, having gotten our two ill crew members situated with a local healing woman. We were due to leave that morning, and I was up early, conferring with the captain about the route to Leodhas. All of a sudden, Estelle came running up to me.

  “Oncle Neddy,” she cried, “I think Sib is leaving us!”

  She looked upset.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  And she said that she had been worried about Sib, who had been acting sad and étrange. “Last night she told me to be a brave girl and to remember what she had said about the winds. I woke up early this morning, and she was gone. There was a note, addressed to you, left on her bunk. I ran out to look for her, and I thought I saw her leaving the ship.”

  My heart sank. I had been worried about Sib but hadn’t been able to find out what was troubling her.

  Estelle handed me the note.

  “Thank you,” I said, and tore it open in haste. The note wasn’t long, and it immediately became clear it was one of farewell.

  “Which direction was she going?” I asked Estelle.

  “Wh
en she left the ship, she went right. That is north, I think. Up the harbor.”

  I raced off the ship and headed north. There were a handful of vessels docked in that part of the harbor.

  I thought I spied Sib’s silver hair near one of the ships that was farthest away. I ran faster.

  “Sib!” I called.

  She turned, an anguished look on her face.

  “No, Neddy,” she said.

  I grabbed her arm.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “It is in the note.”

  “No, it isn’t. All that is there is goodbye. Tell me.” I was angry now. I knew she loved me, she had said so, and I was sure it hadn’t been just to keep me from dying.

  “Neddy, there are things in my past, I told Rose this, things that make it impossible for me to marry. It wouldn’t be fair to you . . .”

  I was baffled. “There is nothing that would change how I feel about you, Sib.”

  “I know that. Nor I you. But—”

  “Why now?”

  “It is being here,” she said. “In Skottland. It is where . . . Painful memories.”

  “Tell them to me, Sib.”

  “No.”

  “What about Rose? Would you leave her and Charles and Winn?”

  I could see her hesitate.

  “Come back, Sib. I won’t press you. If you cannot be with me, I will accept that. But don’t sail off to . . .” I stopped, at a loss, gazing up at the ship before us.

  “Saint Petersburg,” she said, a little embarrassed. “It seemed as far away as I could get.”

  I shook my head. “Come back,” I repeated. “Rose needs you.”

  She nodded and put her arm through mine. We made our way back to the ship.

  Rose

  IT WAS VERENDI WHO LED ME OUTSIDE to a small building behind theirs. I hadn’t noticed it before, but possibly it had not been there before.

  Verendi ushered me through the door. “As I said, you shall have everything you need, for as long as it takes, and that includes food and drink, which will replenish itself, so no need to worry about going hungry. Also, there are three hooks for you to hang the cloaks on once you are finished,” she said, pointing to an evenly spaced row of gleaming golden hooks on the wall near the door. “You are free to go outside. But I would not recommend you come back to our house to ask for anything more. We will just say no, and it might annoy Skuld.”