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The servant in the kitchen turned back to her work. Gytha was not entirely certain at first this was a female, but she thought so. Her hair was a gray similar to that of the other servant, and her pointed ears peeked through the straight, smooth strands. Gytha thought this might be the one who had undressed her the previous night; it relieved her that it had been another woman, whatever sort of woman she might be.

“Hello,” Gytha ventured. “I’m Gytha.”

The servant looked up and nodded politely. The angles of her face and lips seemed ever so slightly softer than those of the other servant, and Gytha grew slightly more confident that it was a female. The emptiness in her stomach was familiar, but it was more difficult to ignore with the sight of food in front of her. Would it be rude to ask for food? She did not want to let her current hunger make the rest of the stay here more challenging by offending her hosts.

The female servant glanced at her again and turned away. She pulled a plate from a cabinet and cut several fat slices of golden cheese, which she arranged in a neat curve. She added purple carrots, which contrasted beautifully with the rich cheese and the smooth white of the plate. The servant pulled a steaming loaf of bread from an oven Gytha had not noticed, sliced an enormous piece from the end, and put it on the already-full plate. She pushed it toward Gytha without a word.

“Thank you,” the girl said, sincerity filling her voice.

The servant’s gray eyes flicked over her face, as if she were vaguely startled, and then she nodded. She pointed to a small wooden table for two and chairs in the corner. Gytha sat and ate. Her escort folded his arms and stood near her, watching the other servant return to her work.

“Thank you,” Gytha said again when she had finished eating. “May I know your name?”

The servant shook her head and did not look up.

“Well, thank you for the food.” It felt silly to keep saying the same thing, but it was always better to be overly polite than not polite enough. Even, or perhaps especially, to magical beings who might be dangerous.

Gytha continued her exploration of the underground palace, for it was more expansive and varied than any palace or castle she had ever imagined. There was a great hall with a vaulted ceiling that soared so high above her head she could not pick out the details of it at all, except to see that it glowed a soft blue that permeated the room with a cold, clear light. The walls gleamed with rough crystal.

Another room was entirely given over to painting. Three easels of different types stood in a row, and one of these held a half-finished painting of a small village that seemed familiar. Gytha stopped, puzzled, before she realized that it was her village as it might appear from one of the hillsides to the north, lookingsouth over the little valley where the houses nestled among the snowy trees. She had never stood in that exact spot, but she had walked lower on the same hillside.

The narrow street in the center of town looked more crooked, and the lodges more jumbled together, from this perspective. There weren’t enough buildings for even a child to get lost. She found her own lodge among the trees some distance from town, and then the paths to the river, barely discernible as shadowy trails in the white snow beneath the trees.

As she moved the lantern closer to the canvas, the exquisite detail astonished her. There was Fastulfr with his thick fur cloak, striding up the path to his lodge with a brace of hares dangling from one hand. There was Tryggvi with his draught horse that he hired out sometimes.

Gytha blinked and drew back. The painting was beautiful, but it wasn’t real. Her family’s lodge looked comfortable and cozy, which it was, but the painting seemed to depict some imaginary time in which her family had not been plagued by bad harvests, bad hunting, hunger, and illness. All the pain and sorrow were gone from the picture, leaving only the joy.

Forgetting the servant, she stepped past the easel to look at the other canvases stacked against the wall. There were dozens of them, with more piled in an alcove she had not previously noticed. The next painting was very different, showing a breathtaking panorama of mountains, valleys, and rivers. Green trees, crystalline lakes, grass, ferns, rocks, cliffs, and snow were all painted with loving attention to detail. Every color was exact, every curl of every blade of grass was both realistic and unrealistically perfect, as if no pain or sorrow ever touched this magnificent land. Only after admiring it for some time did Gytha notice a tiny figure in the bottom right corner. A small white bear stood with his head down staring into a lake. Though themountains and clouds above were reflected, there was no reflection of the bear.

Another painting, and another, and another. One showed a youth with short, dark brown hair and a crimson cloak standing on the balcony of a palace built into a steep cliff face overlooking choppy, sunlit water, rich with turquoise and indigo hues that stood out with startling clarity. In the distance, the water met the sky, as if the water would reach to the end of the world. The youth’s face was turned away, so that the painting mostly showed his dark hair and very edge of his jaw as he looked toward the horizon. Who was he?

The paintings, despite their undeniable skill and beauty, had a melancholic, lonely feel. Gytha glanced at the servant and almost asked him who the artist was, but she could not bring herself to speak.

The servant had vertical pupils like a cat. His silence was unnerving.

She flipped several canvases forward to look at those farther back. A youth, perhaps the same as before but without the cloak, brandished a narrow sword at a figure that looked like the servant beside her.

Gytha looked over her shoulder at the servant and back at the picture, trying not to show that she had noticed the similarity. The servant grabbed her arm and pulled her away, pushing the canvas back among the others with his other hand.

“Ow!” she cried.

The servant smiled placatingly, not showing his teeth, and edged between her and the finished paintings in the alcove. He gestured toward the room and bowed slightly, somehow both humbly agreeable and menacing.

Gytha sidled away from him, trying to keep her heart from pounding. His hand was as cold and hard as ice, and his touch had sent a chill of fear through her whole body.

He followed her into the hall and to another door.

“Where is the bear?” she asked.

There was no answer, and when she looked back at him, he ducked his head politely and said nothing. So she swept on, trying to be brave. She found another empty room.

Then at last she found a room that might have been lived in. It was larger than hers, but not by much. There was a bed, a well-used fireplace, a desk and parchment, and a separate bathing chamber with an enormous tub set into the stone floor.

“Where is the bear?” she repeated, and received only silence as her answer. She turned back to the corridor and started toward her own room.

Then she felt the bear’s presence behind them and stopped so suddenly the servant bumped into her. He stepped back, ducked his head, and said nothing, neither a word of anger nor an apology.

The corridor was scarcely wide enough for the bear to pass by her, but he hardly glanced at her as he passed. Gytha felt it like a sting, a slap in the face, and she was angry.