Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow - Jessica Day George [21]
They went faster and faster, and the hills became mountains, and the bear ran up the sheer stone sides as though they were level, with Rollo at his heels. The sun set and then rose again, and they passed into a forest so thick with trees that the lass could not tell night from day, and yet the bear’s pace did not flag and neither did the wolf’s. The girl slept for what could have been hours, but was more likely days, until she felt the bear slowing down.
When he had slowed enough that she could lift her head to look around, she had no idea where they were. The sharp peaks and mountains of her home, dark with trees, were gone. Instead a white plain lay before them, deep with snow. To the west there was a tall crag, and on top of the crag she saw a shining thing of greenish white that looked like a crown sitting on the head of a giant.
“That is your home now,” the isbjørn said.
“Let’s go,” Rollo shouted, and took off across the snow plain, yipping like a puppy.
The bear gave a bellow that might have been a laugh and went after him. The lass put her face down once more, the wind dragging at her.
At least Rollo was excited, she thought. And her family would have wealth. That was what was important. She hardly dared to admit it, but the novelty of being taken by an enchanted bear to live in a palace had worn off.
She was simply terrified.
Part 2
Lady of the Palace of Ice
Chapter 9
It took longer than the lass would have thought to reach the crag where the palace stood. They had already traveled for unknown days, and night was falling by the time they reached the foot of the crag. The white plain had been so flat and featureless that she had misjudged its expanse. Rollo beat the white bear to it, and stood, panting eagerly, at the bottom of a steep trail that wound around the hill.
“Follow me,” the bear said to Rollo. His manner was much warmer toward the wolf now. The long race across the plain seemed to have made them friends.
The lass sat up on the bear’s back and looked around as he went up the path. It was barely wide enough for the bear, and so smooth that she could see their reflection in it. The crag wasn’t stone at all, she realized with a start, but ice—smooth green ice covered with a rime of white snow everywhere but on the path. The peak was so regular in shape, and the path so even, that she guessed it had been created by some hands other than Nature’s. But whose? Who was powerful enough to make a mountain out of ice?
She spoke this last thought aloud, and the bear answered her.
“She is,” he said as he plodded up the path. It spiraled around the hill, and now the lass could see that the white snow plain extended in every direction as far as the horizon. “She is that powerful.”
“Who?”
But the bear did not answer her.
It was full dark and the moon was on the rise by the time they reached the top of the crag. The palace was not much narrower than the crag: there was only a slender path going around its base. With a gasp, the lass saw that the palace itself had been made of green ice, though the massive doors were hammered gold set with diamonds and rubies the size of goose eggs.
The isbjørn approached the doors and let out a roar, and the doors swung open. They entered into a lofty hall, hung with banners of silk that depicted a strange crest: a pearly white isbjørn on a blue background, with a golden sun to one side of it and a silver moon to the other. Beneath the bear there was a disturbing symbol that looked like a saw, or a serrated knife, embroidered in black.
The lass was pleased to find that, although the palace was made of ice, it was pleasantly warm inside. She slithered off the bear’s back and removed her hood, turning slowly to take it all in. The ceiling of the hall was supported by slender pillars of ice, carved all around with jagged markings. Her gaze sharpened on these and she went forward to touch one. The ice pillar was smooth and hard, but warm and not at all wet. She studied the carvings