Page 15

I n the morning, the shirt and trousers were neatly folded again, but not how Gytha had left them. She must have slept through the stranger’s visit entirely.

Well. That was something. It was a strange thought, but she must have felt safe enough to not be on tenterhooks while she waited for him to enter.

Now that the pajamas were finished, she felt it reasonable to give her eyes a rest from the close work. She read one of the books for a time, but she found it difficult to focus; the stories made little sense, and there were many words she had never learned.

By now she had added many small flowers to her sampler and explored all the rooms she could find. Neither of the servants spoke to her, and she had been too shy to press them much.

After nearly two months in this place, she felt bolder. The queen, with her flashing eyes and pointed teeth, had not come again, and Gytha was glad of it. The two ice goblin servants seemed to be the only ones in this place, aside from the bear and herself.

Having made her decision, she strode down the hall with Magni behind her. She entered the kitchen and found the woman crushing spices in a mortar and pestle.

“May I help you?” Gytha asked, smiling.

The woman’s gray eyes widened and she looked at Magni and then back at the girl. She pressed her gray lips together.

“I don’t want to get you in trouble,” Gytha said, when the woman still hesitated. “But I know how to make bread and soup and other things. But you’ve made many things I’ve never learned. I’d like to learn from you.”

The woman’s eyes focused on Magni again, and they seemed to be having a whole conversation without saying a word. At last the woman gave a tiny shrug.

She pulled an empty bowl from a cabinet and put flour, oil, a scoop of sourdough starter, and salt into a bowl without measuring and pushed it toward Gytha.

She pantomimed squishing the mixture with her hands.

Soon she took the bowl from Gytha and put a cutting board in front of her, with a pile of fresh herbs cut from a little line of pots on a shelf in the corner.

Despite the lack of natural light, the herbs looked healthy.

Gytha could not identify them all, but she recognized chives, sorrel, and parsley.

Under the woman’s silent but agreeable instruction, Gytha put some of the herbs into the bread dough and formed it into a round loaf, while other herbs went into a pot of bubbling soup.

Magni looked on with a strange, tense expression.

The bread was apparently for dinner, because the woman left it rising and began to prepare a tray for Gytha’s lunch.

When the tray was ready, the woman pointed her out the door, and Magni carried the tray for her as they went back to her bed chamber.

“Thank you!”

It was her birthday, and there was no one to tell.

Month by month, more flowers were added to her sampler.

She embroidered every flower she could remember from the world above ground, and when she had exhausted her memory, she created new and extraordinary flowers, great pink frilly things, tiny yellow bonnets, deep blue cups with bright scarlet centers, and even more fantastical shapes.

She spent the rest of her time on the embroidered collar to sell, but eventually she finished that, too.

When she clipped the last bits of thread from the collar and put it aside, she picked up another piece of cloth.

No. She needed a walk, some exercise of body and mind, something different to look at.

Again she explored all the rooms, examining each tapestry in turn.

The images were strange. One depicted a tall palace made of ice or crystal, and a crowd of ice goblins kneeling with their faces to the icy ground while a tall figure stood on the sweeping steps with arms raised.

The standing figure might have been the queen Gytha had met, or perhaps some past queen; the intricate weaving did not have enough detail to identify individuals.

Gytha found the image disquieting, and she turned to Magni.

“Is this the queen?”

He gave a short, sharp nod .

“Is she a good queen?” Gytha tilted her head and tried to read his expression.

His lips gave what was probably supposed to be his closed-mouth smile, but there was a strange light in his eyes that made it seem more like a grimace. He shrugged one shoulder.

Gytha sighed. She walked laps around the great, empty hall she had seen first until her calves burned and her feet were sore. Magni followed her at first, until she told him she was just going in circles, and then he stood in the middle of the room and watched her.

For well over two weeks Alexander had been nowhere to be seen.

Gytha entertained herself by doing as much physical exercise as she could endure.

She ran from one end of the great hall to the other until she was out of breath, and then tried to stand on her hands balanced against the wall.

Her muscles burned from the exertion, and she relished the burn because it felt like strength finally returning to her limbs.

Perhaps her body was weak, but the combination of good meals and exercise made her feel stronger by the day.

Not that she had any real idea how to prepare her body for a physical challenge.

She knew only that the exercise felt like it was doing her good by working out the last of the exhaustion of illness.

When she went to sleep at night, she slept deeply and well.

Magni watched her activity without a word.

One day she ran laps around the great hall, and when she became too tired, she walked backwards. Then she turned around and began to walk, thoroughly tired and bored. Just at the moment when she decided she could not walk another step, the great bear stalked into the room.

“Where have you been?” Gytha asked. She crossed to him and put her hand out, but hesitated when he made a strange, growling noise in his throat.

She stared at him, and he lowered his head and turned away. But he didn’t walk away; he just stood there with his head down.

“Don’t be grumpy at me,” she said at last. “Where have you been?”

Alexander gave a heavy sigh and turned a little toward her.

“Well, if you won’t accept a pet on the head, at least keep me company. I’m going to try painting. I’ve never done it before.” She walked down the hall, aware of the bear’s silent, looming presence behind her.

“May I paint?” she asked Magni belatedly. She had assumed she was allowed.

He gave slight nod. She turned all the lanterns up and examined her materials. She was bored almost to tears, and the boredom made the loneliness worse.

This was a trial she had undertaken voluntarily, and she wanted to endure it with grace.

Even with gratitude, for when in her life had she been able to eat such costly, exotic foods?

When had she had such unfettered access to luxurious threads, not to mention paint and canvas and even oil for lamps?

Much of this strange prison was luxurious.

But she missed her parents and her little sisters and brothers.

She missed their bright eyes and endless questions.

She missed Sigrid’s quiet competence with the little ones and Solveig’s thoughtfulness.

She missed the way her parents looked at each other, with trust and camaraderie as well as love, because they were a team together against any threat.

In all the hunger and suffering and despair, she had never been alone.

The love that surrounded her had been so powerful that she was like a fish swimming in water; the love supported her and filled her lungs, even though half the time she didn’t remember it was there at all.

Being known and loved was such a natural state of existence that now, isolated, with only wordless strangers for company, she felt the loneliness like a physical loss.

Gytha painted a mountain first, because in her imagination it was easy.

Gray here, darker gray here, brown there for tree trunks, green pine needles, a blue sky.

None of the shapes or colors were quite right, and she grew frustrated, painting over her crooked trees and unrealistic mountain surrounded by an improbable, flat plain. She lost track of time.

A deep sigh startled her, and she spun around. The bear was lying on the floor with his head upon his paws like a dog, sad or sleepy or bored, staring at her with mournful eyes. Magni was leaning against the wall, his eyes half-closed. He must be bored. She wasn’t very entertaining.

“What? You think you can do better?” she asked the bear morosely. He sighed again, and she rolled her eyes in frustration.

He stood silently and stepped forward, towering over her, and bent his face so that they were cheek to cheek. His hot breath brushed her neck, and she closed her eyes, trying to remember his kind voice. His warmth, his looming presence, comforted her for a moment.

Then she opened her eyes, and the feeling was gone. Magni was staring at them, his eyes glittering with some unreadable emotion. The bear looked at her painting, sighed, and turned around to lie on the floor as before.

Gytha scowled at him. “I didn’t think so.” She huffed and turned back to the painting. It looked childish and awkward, despite her efforts, and she glared at it too. Finally she washed the brushes and put the paints back where she had found them. Her creative urge was quashed.

She went back to her room and cried.

Several days later, she went back to try again.

She painted the entire canvas gray and stared at it, planning her painting before she touched brush to paint.

The mountain was shades of gray. The sky was gray.

The trees were gray-green, the river gray-blue.

The colors felt accurate; she felt that the world had turned gray.

The excitement of this adventure in the frozen north with her ice goblin prison guard and the gentle-hearted bear was entirely gone.

Neither the colors nor the forms were appealing, but it fit her mood. Her eyes welled with angry, discouraged tears. She rinsed the brushes quickly and rushed from the room.

That night she woke when her visitor slipped silently into bed. It almost didn’t seem strange any more. “Did you see my painting?”

He froze.

“It’s not any good. I wanted to make something beautiful because I want to redeem this time, so it doesn’t feel like I’m in prison. But I just made something ugly.

“I don’t want my time here to be ugly and worthless. I agreed to do this because I wanted to do something beautiful for the bear, because he was kind to my family and me. But nothing about my painting is beautiful.”

In the chill darkness, there was no answer, but Gytha had a strange sense that the man was listening sympathetically. She didn’t know what else to say, though, and he could give no word of comfort.

A flash of fear passed through her mind.

What if her nighttime visitor wasn’t Alexander after all, but a different stranger?

She shifted away from him and shuddered.

How could she know him if he would not talk?

How could she endure such loneliness? She felt fragmented and unmoored from the love she had known all her life.

When Gytha ventured to the room with paints again, she was surprised to find that the painting was subtly different.

The grey was tinged with a little blue there, a hint of cream there.

Not so much that one would notice at first, but enough.

The picture was more alive, more sad, more real.

The crooked trees were transformed from awkwardly misshapen to mangled by the wind yet somehow dignified.

The mountain looked foreboding rather than simply overlarge, and the flat plain now had the texture of wind-whipped snow and ice, with a hint of flakes eddying just above the ground.

She glanced at the bear, who had followed her in from the hall. He blinked silently and lay down. The paints she had left drying on the palette and the brushes she hadn’t fully cleaned were all neatly washed and dried and put back where they belonged. Gytha felt ashamed of her childish messiness.