Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow - Jessica Day George [29]
Rollo seemed to doubt the stranger’s existence, and Erasmus and the isbjørn were deaf to any mention of him. She was on her own. She would have thought it was just a dream, but every morning when she woke there was a dent in the pillow beside her, and once she found a single dark hair caught in the lace at the edge of the pillowcase.
The wolf was never in the room when the man appeared, and just looked puzzled when she asked him why he didn’t try to stop the intruder. Rollo never saw or heard anyone coming in. He did admit that the bed smelled like a man the next day, but had no idea how this person could have gotten past him.
Another concern that took up the lass’s time was clothing. She was not fond of sewing, and the thought of altering those ridiculously ornate gowns had made her shudder. But after two weeks of sitting on silk cushions and dining off fine china while wearing a frayed sweater and patched skirt, she began to feel self-conscious.
Other than her nightshirted bedfellow, she was the only person in the palace who even wore clothes, so she knew that no one else cared. But vanity pricked her for the first time in her life. She was an attractive young woman, and all her life she had worn the much-mended castoffs of eight older siblings. True, these gowns were not new, but they looked like they had been worn only once, and they were of such fine cloth that she was almost embarrassed to touch them with her work-worn hands.
The lass spent a week taking in seams and cutting off excess cloth with a long, sharp pair of shears. It almost made her sick, the first time she did it. Selling one of these gowns would keep her family for a year. And here she was with dozens of them, cutting them up at will and altering their hems with her uneven stitches.
Often the gowns had pearls or precious lace that had to be removed before the seams could be taken in. The lass took some care with this, removing the lace and clusters of pearls and putting them in a scented wooden box in her bedroom. She didn’t reattach them to the gowns, preferring her clothing to be plainer, but she had a plan for them.
When the year was over she would return home. The bear had promised wealth for her family—she had seen the sacrifice that would bring it to them—but she wanted to be sure. She knew Askeladden: he was far too lazy and fond of merrymaking. It would hardly surprise her to find that his fame was tarnished and whatever fortune he had found squandered in a few years. But if she could smuggle the pearls and other jewels from these gowns out with her, she could sell them to help her family.
Worrying that she would not be permitted to carry anything with her when she left, she cut up a hideous gown of puce silk and made herself a belt with ten pockets hanging from it. In each one she placed pearls, coils of gold bullion thread, and even some rubies she removed from the décolletage of a magnificent ball gown. Then she sewed the pockets shut. She wore the belt day and night, taking it off only to bathe, to ensure that no matter what happened she would have some wealth.
That done, and the upper levels of the palace explored, she went lower. She had never seen the kitchen where her sumptuous meals were prepared, or the servants’ quarters that Erasmus had spoken of. She had wondered at first if the food was prepared by magic, and Erasmus the only servant, but as the faun grew easier around her, he came to refer to other servants.
“Who are they? Are they fauns, too?”
But Erasmus wouldn’t say. The lass remembered the faun’s sad look on her first day in the palace, when he had