Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow - Jessica Day George [65]
The aged princess’s horse slowed as they reached this strange forest. The lass was able to sit up straight and look around at the bizarre living sculptures that surrounded them. Rollo, panting hard, dragged along behind them, twigs and leaves caught in his fur and little balls of snow tangled in the long feathery hairs on the backs of his legs and tail.
There was no snow on the ground here, though some was pushed up against the trees in hard drifts. The ground looked polished: there were no twigs or fir needles littering it. They came to a great rock that had been smoothed into a shape like a throne twice the height of a man. Vongóður stopped, and the lass slithered off his broad, pale back.
They stood there for a while, all three of them. The horse plainly thought that its duty was fulfilled, and refused to go farther. The lass was hesitant to send the stallion on his way, however, and Rollo was just glad that they had stopped. He flopped down on the hard ground and fell instantly asleep.
“Hello?” the lass dared to call out at last. “East wind? The three old . . . mosters . . . who are your neighbors sent me.”
In truth the lass was not expecting to see anything more extraordinary than a man. A strong man, perhaps, a strange man, most likely. But just a man all the same. The mosters had said that their neighbor was the east wind, but the lass had not taken that literally. Jarl used to regale his children with tales of great heroes and ancient gods riding into battle on the backs of the winds, but the lass had always suspected that the heroes, if they did exist, had simply ridden horses like everyone else.
And now as she stood in this alien landscape and called out to the east wind, exhausted in body and mind, she just hoped that whoever answered had a sleigh she could ride in as they continued their journey. That is, if he would help her continue her journey.
The air swirled around her. It rose to a frenzy that tore her hair out of its braid and whipped it around her face. Vongóð ur dropped his head and flattened his ears but didn’t shy. Rollo looked up, sighed, and staggered to his feet to stand protectively by his mistress’s side. The lass clung to the horse’s mane, closing her eyes against little icy particles of dirt or snow that blew into her face.
When the wind calmed, she opened her eyes, and the east wind was sitting on his throne.
The east wind didn’t look human, because it wasn’t human. It was a great swirling concoction of leaves and twigs and mist and smoke and rain and dust that at last collected into the shape of a wolf, sitting upright on the stone seat of the throne.
“Why are you here”—its voice howled and whispered and whistled in her ears, and a tendril of wind snaked out to tap up and down her body from head to toe and back again—“human maid?”
“You’re real,” she breathed, and could say nothing else for a heartbeat. When she found her voice again, she said, “I’m looking for the castle east of the sun and west of the moon.”
A great shudder racked the east wind. It flew to bits, and then gathered itself into wolf-shape once more. “Why would you want to go there?”
“I lived in the palace of ice with the prince who was an isbjørn. Because of me, he is being forced to marry a troll, and I wish to help him.”
“Mortal creatures are so strange,” the wind mused. “Here is another one looking for a human male she barely knows.”
“Did you help Tova?”
“I suppose that was her name. I carried her to the plain where dwells the west wind.”
This news made the lass’s shoulders sag. “So you do not know the way to the troll’s palace?”
“I have never blown so far, nor have I ever wanted to. The magic of trolls is an evil even the winds cannot defend against. You would do wise to emulate my neighbors: build a hut and abide where fate has taken you.”
“I can’t,” the